In Parliament, on Monday, we saw the future – and it lurks. Many scoffed when Lawrence Gonzi said the Government’s priority was to focus on this weekend’s so-called 5+5 meeting of western Mediterranean states, the first since the Arab Spring. Did Gonzi hype up the 5+5 to distract us from putting two and two together?
There is no shred of evidence that that last meeting with Gaddafi has damaged relations with Libya- Ranier Fsadni
Some of the scoffers also mocked Gonzi, yet again, for being the last Western leader to embrace Muammar Gaddafi, just a week before the beginning of the uprising in Benghazi. That showed, they say, the Gonzi government’s lack of judgment. No other government, they claim, would have accepted to meet Gaddafi at that stage, when it was clear there would be a popular uprising in Libya, too. Those are claims worth exploring seriously.
On February 9, 2011, when the meeting was held, only the Tunisian regime had collapsed. Hosni Mubarak resigned two days later. Let’s not forget, however, that the Tunisian and Egyptian events, though giddying, were exceptional. By February, uprisings had also begun in Algeria (as early as December 2010), Yemen, Jordan, Oman and Bahrain. In all of them, the uprisings either failed or were contained. It became clear that regimes with access to oil wealth had a greater chance of survival. Indeed, in all those countries, apart from a change at the very top in Yemen, no fundamental change has taken place till now.
Even if protests were expected in Libya, there was no strong reason to assume that Gaddafi was going to go the way of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali or Mubarak, rather than of Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of Jordan or Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria.
The potential instability in Libya, however, made it more important to meet Gaddafi. The long-standing Maltese concerns – unpaid businessmen, increasing vulnerability to demands for protection payments, irregular immigration – would only grow if Libya experienced an important political crisis.
Gaddafi did not have a record of civilian massacres. However, he had a well-established record of addressing crises with economic crackdowns, wholesale expulsions of selected foreign nationals and confiscation of capital. To have snubbed him by cancelling the meeting would have put inter-governmental communication, Maltese capital and jobs at risk in the short and (since Gaddafi’s end couldn’t be predicted) long terms.
Gaddafi was already reacting to the regime change in Tunisia. I’m not sure what the Malta Government knew but, at the time of the meeting, there were strong rumours in Tunisian political circles that the wave of irregular migration that began after January 14 was organised with Libyan aid. Whether Gaddafi was involved or not, a face-to-face meeting to gauge his mood could only have been beneficial to Maltese planning for any eventuality. Meeting Gaddafi was the only responsible thing to do. Cancelling the meeting would have been a dereliction of duty.
As it is, Gaddafi’s fall happened because of a sequence of events that could have gone differently. Had Mubarak not fallen so soon, Gaddafi might not have misplayed his hand by overreacting in Benghazi. Had the Syrian conflagration broken out first, the UN is highly unlikely to have approved military action in Libya. Nato’s action needed the cover of the Arab League, which first had to decide to take on the unprecedented role of protecting peoples, not states.
Anyone who says that Gonzi should have known how things were going to develop is guilty of gross misjudgement himself. Even with hindsight, the Prime Minister did what good sense demanded. There is no shred of evidence that that last meeting has damaged relations with Libya or any other country – as this weekend’s meeting shows.
It is the first heads of government meeting of the western Mediterranean group in Europe – and the first since 2003. The Tunisian and Moroccan prime ministers will meet each other for the first time here. Libya’s participation is another milestone. The agenda is of enormous strategic concern – economic, political and environmental – to Malta. Yes, it’s a boring summit that steals no headlines. No participating country borders the Middle East conflicts. But that’s exactly where its promise lies. There need be no grandstanding or fundamental obstacles to cooperation on a quiet but revolutionary basis. On the European side, France, Italy and Spain have all taken a great interest in the meeting’s preparations.
France is calling for a new form of shared environmental governance: if that happens on the necessary scale, it would be a political breakthrough as potentially significant as the foundation of the Coal and Steel Community. Several members of the group want to nail down an agreement to build a transport network linking the whole Maghreb. If that happens, the regional economic stimulus would be a game changer.
Should Malta care whether Algeria does become the Brazil of Africa or whether the French, Italian, Spanish and Tunisian economies begin to grow again? Of course. Singapore is what it is because it lies in the middle of some of the fastest growing economies in the world.
The 5+5 meeting brings together regional leaders to discuss long-term issues that will define us: good governance, job creation and regional peace. Anyone who says that is of pale importance must lie somewhere beyond the pale.
ranierfsadni@europe.com