If Labour lose the next election, it will be down to the government’s failure to achieve what it set out to – i.e. on account of real or perceived broken electoral promises. It won’t be because of broken vows or promises between ministers and their spouses as a consequence of alleged (or even proven) liaisons with lovers and mistresses.
If every aspect of our lives were suddenly made public, none of us would emerge unscathed. No politician, pope, priest, lawyer, doctor, magistrate, judge, journalist, columnist, blogger or teacher would be invulnerable. Something invariably lurks in our past – and not necessarily anything sinful, illegal or illicit either.
The Maltese media have never really been a thorn in the private lives of politicians or of the movers and shakers who play important roles in shaping our lives and society.
Digging up dirt has always been an internal affair, in the main, reserved for the run-up to election campaigns, and even then, politicians usually exercise a certain degree of prudence and restraint, drawing the line at the bedroom door.
During the past week, Malta’s social and other media were awash in extramarital affairs and stories about two of the Labour Party’s most popular ministers – Owen Bonnici and Konrad Mizzi.
Whether they were targeted deliberately in an attempt to dent and discredit their track record while creating a semblance of sleaze within the Labour Party is anyone’s guess. Although Mizzi has categorically denied the claims and has started proceedings for libel and defamation, this has not stopped commentators, columnists and ordinary citizens having their say.
The allegations have provoked discussion on whether one’s private life has a bearing on one’s professional one, whether a politician’s political judgement is called into question by his reneging on or breaking his marriage vows, and ultimately whether private affairs should be a matter of public concern.
While a person’s private life could be relevant (can you trust a rapist, murderer or a wife-beater?) and could impact the ability to do a job properly, I find the whole you-can’t-trust-a-man-who-cheats-on-his-wife-if-a-man-cheats-on-his-wife-he’ll-cheat-on-his-job-or-his-country a little shoehorned, stretched and contrived.
Once you go down the morality road, it’s a slippery slope. If you’re calling someone’s political and professional judgement into question using the yardstick of morally correct and incorrect choices, you can’t pick and choose what is immorally acceptable or justifiable and what isn’t.
I – and probably three quarters of America and the world – would pick Bill Clinton over George Bush and Barack Obama for President all over again. Not only did Clinton survive a sex scandal, he remains one of the world’s most popular presidents.
The moral of the immoral story here is that although you can argue that a person is the sum total of his choices and decisions, there are certain things that are strictly restricted to the realm of the private, over which no one really has jurisdiction or the right to judge.
Having an abortion, for instance, which is both illegal and criminal, to say nothing of morally reprehensible to many, is still not the same as forging a cheque or misappropriating monies, whatever anybody says.
Moreover, many of the ‘known adulterers’ who were world leaders, were possibly better and certainly not worse for the country than their ‘known faithful’ peers. And of course the operative word here is ‘known’.
I am sure there are far more affairs and other immoral and dishonest dealings on both sides of the political spectrum we don’t know or talk about than those that we do. If everyone who has ever cheated on his spouse is deemed untrustworthy and unfit for office, the world would come to a standstill.
The discussion about Bonnici’s and Mizzi’s marital status yielded another accidental by-product. If Simon Busuttil’s marriage breakdown was until now a Pandora’s box, it has suddenly become an issue, which people feel comfortable discussing.
Last week, every columnist who wrote about Bonnici or Mizzi deliberately drew Busuttil into the crossfire. It’s inevitable, and if things continue to go down this road, Busuttil and his own party will have a much harder time escaping media scrutiny than their predecessors did. That was a different time and place – politics in an old-fashioned world of patriarchal ‘gentlemanliness’.
Private lives and indiscretions today have become fair game. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Speculating, drawing one-side, biased conclusions and turning people’s lives into freak shows is repugnant
No one is disputing that there is definitely a place for this sort of information in a society which upholds freedom of speech. I had no idea that Bonnici was married until I found out he had separated. Unlike the Prime Minister (and more recently the Leader of the Opposition, who seems to be emulating the American technique adopted by the Muscats), Bonnici was never the sort of politician who wore his heart or his marriage on his sleeve or dragged his wife around like a trophy or appendage.
But a brief news item or press release to the effect that Bonnici, the Minister of Justice, had recently seen the inside of the Family Court, would not have gone amiss.
I have since heard a few versions of the whys and wherefores of Bonnici’s marital collapse, as I had heard about Busuttil’s, when his separation was news. But versions are precisely just that. Ex parte at best.
What goes on within the confines of a marriage is essentially unknowable and private. Even the spouses and people who were right there have their own versions and truths which are diametrically opposed to one another’s.
Which is why puritanical and hypocritical condemnation of anyone’s marriage or marital breakdown is the worst sort of ‘morally reprehensible behaviour’ imaginable.
Reporting is one thing speculating, drawing one-side, biased conclusions, bad mouthing third parties and basically turning people’s lives into freak shows is repugnant – far more sinful, despicable and immoral than than any extra-marital affair.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com