About not getting it

I’m nothing special. All right, stop the wild approving applause, what I mean is that my grasp of language and logic is not especially outstanding. At least, that’s what I used to think but the more I listen to people talking and, even more so, the more I read what they write, the more I start forming the impression that either they’re missing something or I am, and I know I’m not.

For instance, consider the minor storm that broke last weekend when it was reported by the North Korean news agency (the only one they have, so I can use the definite article) that the Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Muscat, leader of the Labour Party, made a number of observations to the outgoing North Korean Ambassador that were not, how should one put it, entirely four-square with the accepted view of things North Korean.

Dr Muscat’s boys came back with a dazzling riposte: the Labour Party condemns the proliferation of nuclear weapons (actually, it seems, if Leo Brincat is any authority, it is “nukklear” weapons that they are against – he must have been so intent on his task that he forgot the correct pronunciation) The other reported remarks went unchallenged and, therefore, at this stage, we have to come to the conclusion that they were accurately reported.

Pushed to account for these quite frankly ill-advised remarks, Labour, particularly in the form of the aforementioned Mr Brincat on Bondì+, came back with what is rapidly becoming Labour’s stock-in-trade: when all else fails, counter-charge from an entirely different direction.

In this case, the counter-charge consisted in, basically, telling the world that the Foreign Minister had also met the ambassador (and MaltaToday had already, dutifully and breathlessly, reported this) and that in the past there had been meetings by the Prime Minister with, horror of horrors, some Iranian government bigwigs.

Watching Mr Brincat’s somewhat smug performance on Bondì+ (not live, as I wanted to check out Chelsea’s opponents in the Champions League final and, while on this subject, can we be spared local commentary at all?) I found myself wanting to scream: “But that’s not the point, don’t you get it? It’s not the meeting that was the problem, it’s what was said during it!”

Of course, Mr Brincat does get it. He knows, being an intelligent chap, that what Dr Muscat said is indefensible but defend it he had to, so he resorted to the usual prestidigitation of those backed into corners. If the show had been Just a Minute, the buzzers would have been deafening and the charge of “deviation” would have been levelled at him with no place for him to hide.

It’s not only on the subject of Dr Muscat and Kim whoever that people don’t get it. On Wednesday, Desmond Zammit Marmarà wrote a paean for Dom Mintoff, pleading for the world to judge the man on the basis of what he did for the country rather than (presumably) what he did to it, and us.

The thing is, so clear is it that Mr Zammit Marmarà doesn’t get the truth about Mr Mintoff that, at one point, the only defence he could come up with in connection with his (Mr Mintoff’s) failure to keep violence in check was that “he was too caught up in his administrative duties” (or words to that effect, I couldn’t be bothered to look it up). The usual canards about agents provocateurs also flitted in and out of the column, it need hardly be said, making the whole piece look very much like one of those masterpieces of detachment and faux objectivity specialised in by people like Lino Spiteri.

In Mr Zammit Marmarà’s defence, unlike Mr Spiteri he wasn’t close up and personal with the action in Mr Mintoff’s time: Mr Spiteri manages to make it seem as if he were in another universe at the time, gazing distantly on Mr Mintoff’s antics. He might not have got it at the time, or chooses not to get it now, but we did, and still do, get it, very clearly.

It’s not only about politics that people don’t get it, or choose not to get it. The populace at large, for instance, just doesn’t get the fact that this is a country that is governed under the rule of law.

This means that we, the people, are subject to and protected by the law, meaning that the courts are enjoined to uphold the law, whether or not we, the people, understand it or like it.

This particular little rant is brought on by the comments I read under the story of how that ever-so-slightly despicable ex-cleric, Godwin Scerri, got off a charge of rape because of prosecution error, when the Court of Appeal did not uphold the prosecution’s appeal. Seriously, the ill-informed and downright idiotic flood of comments that spewed out below the story was almost wondrous to behold.

Contrast them with a comment made by someone who was very badly affected by the actions of that racist scum in Norway: “We would not be Norwegians if we did not give him a fair trial”.

We seem to have some way to go, here in the south part of Europe.

The whole point of the law is to ensure that people are protected from the mob. This sometimes means that individuals who are, probably, or as in this case, pretty much certainly, guilty of serious crimes get off, to the foaming anger of the great unwashed. That is the price we pay for having a democracy: the system on occasion grinds the wrong way, which is certainly preferable to, say, the North Korean way of doing things.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20