It has happened before and now it happened again. Last month, on a visit to the Central African Republic, a plundered country with a dirt poor population and the world’s second lowest life expectancy (48 years), someone praised Muammar Gaddafi.

You can’t really advance your own agenda without understanding all the relevant points of view- John Attard Montalto

It was my taxi driver, Matisse. He chose his moment. By this time I had already settled, as best I could, in the “Centre Hotel”. It was supposedly the best in the capital, Bangui, but it would not garner more than a single star anywhere else.

We had already driven through the pockmarked, unasphalted streets and discussed how the only time when people were able to get jobs was in the far off days of the self-styled emperor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa. Matisse showed me fine buildings, closed down for the past three decades.

Imagine my surprise when Matisse showed me an enormous compound with the name Hotel Plaza Bangui. It was a five-star hotel with 137 suites, seven ultra suites and two presidential complexes.

“Gaddafi’s hotel,” Matisse explained. “It was supposed to be opened by now! He was going to help us.”

Col Gaddafi, a symbol of hope! What was going on?

When I recently wrote an article about how he was being mourned in some African countries, many readers reacted badly. They assumed that saying that Col Gaddafi was mourned was really to praise him, if not explicitly, then as part of some hidden agenda. However, praise and hidden agendas were far from my thoughts.

In the first place, I was reporting what I saw and read. Any other honest person would have had to say the same. Then I tried to understand why, in various African countries, Col Gaddafi was being seen so differently than he was by Europeans and, of course, vast numbers of Libyans themselves.

I can be as hard-headed, obstinate and convinced I am right as the next politician. Years in politics and in legal practice, however, have taught me the importance of understanding the other point of view.

You can’t really advance your own agenda without understanding all the relevant points of view. It is true of life generally and it is importantly true for European policies abroad.

In Malta, we know from direct experience that if the African continent is not going to be helped to develop economically and politically, if parts of it are allowed to have their states fail and their economies to become basket cases, then Europeans will surely pay the price, in terms of irregular immigration and other problems.

It becomes important, therefore, to note that someone like Col Gaddafi captured popular approval in different parts of Africa. Was it that he was doing something right? Or, at least, does his example point to issues that Europeans should be paying attention to?

To get back to Matisse, my taxi driver. He was not being eccentric. Like his fellow countrymen, at least those I saw, he was easygoing and friendly despite the administrative chaos and general underdevelopment of the country, which saw the capital plunged into darkness on my first night there because the power gave out as torrential rains struck.

However, his country’s history since independence in 1960 has been a bleak series of coups and strikes for unpaid wages. Only this week, the country was in the news again because it is in the middle of a major health-care crisis.

Health provision has been eroded by years of political and military instability.

Malaria is the primary cause of death, with every inhabitant infected at least once a year, while the state fails to provide free treatment to every child under the age of five.

Its population is destitute. Yet, the country should be rich, given its huge mineral resources of gold and diamonds. It has instead been plundered, from colonial times to the present.

The blame cannot all be laid at the door of its people alone. Other countries, including European ones, have in the past colluded with rapacious leaders. France is said, by some, to have paid for the lavish, indulgent, power-drunk coronation ceremony of Bokassa as “emperor”, back in the 1970s. The extravaganza included jewelled crowns for the emperor and his consort as well as a gilded carriage.

That ceremony was attended by then French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, who was said to be fond of the big game hunting offered by the Central African Republic. He is said to have lost his re-election bid because he was damaged by allegations that Bokassa had given him two diamonds.

In such an environment, flamboyant gestures such as those that Col Gaddafi was fond of attract ordinary people’s attention and admiration. Europeans should not imitate such gestures but they should understand why they go down well.

It is because these are countries where diamonds are not forever but only there to be stolen by the next lot of rogues. If Europe can help address the underlying problems, with energy, it will find itself changing the most admired list of African politicians.

Dr Attard Montalto is a Labour member of the European Parliament.

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