When Prime Minister Joseph Muscat spoke about Malta’s vocation to be a bridge in the Mediterranean, he was deliberately echoing a metaphor favoured by several former prime ministers and foreign ministers. Others, as far back as Giorgio Borg Olivier, might not have used the image in speeches but clearly had it in mind in formulating policy. However, it is precisely because the metaphor has been in service for so long that we now need to think carefully about it.
Several dangers lurk if we’re not careful. A long-used metaphor can easily become a cliché, a lifeless image, which engenders clichéd policies or initiatives. Long usage can also take on a life of its own: we think Malta is a bridge given that we’ve been saying so for so long.
Long usage can also breed complacency. Even if we are a bridge, it doesn’t mean necessarily that we are a useful one. A bridge worth using is one that leads somewhere interesting. If we don’t keep up with how Mediterranean polities and societies have moved on, Malta could find itself a bridge to nowhere.
If our politicians are serious about Malta being a bridge between north and south in the Mediterranean, we will, just as a start, have to dispel several illusions.
First, there is no doubt that an earlier generation of politicians had some very strong bonds with certain Arab leaders, like Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gaddafi. But those politicians have long been dead and the kind of politics they stood for has long been swept away. Even the personal friendships established by Lawrence Gonzi in post-Gaddafi Libya are, today, in the flux of a new civil war, of uncertain value.
Thinking that we can rest on our past achievements and friendships is an illusion in a region where power is not being handed over but, rather, being snatched away by new personalities.
Both the Arab Spring and the hard reaction against it have underlined the need for a country that is respected enough to take mediation initiatives. But the events since 2011 have also shown how hard Malta needs to work if it is to take on this role.
The second illusion is that we don’t need to be specific about the kind of bridge we want to be. We can be airy about being this or that, that economic services can count as a ‘bridge’, while actually ducking our heads when sticking our necks out for peace is really needed.
Indeed, we often talk as though there were no bridges in the Mediterranean and it’s enough for us to say we want to be one. The truth is that – thanks to the colonial past – all the European countries in the west Mediterranean have good economic and political links with at least one Arab counterpart.
It’s not being a bridge but the kind of bridge that matters.
Thinking we can rest on past achievements and friendships is an illusion
Our past rhetoric about being a bridge suffered from a curious lack of interest in what other European countries where doing. We were, if you like, an isolated bridge: spouting on about how Arab countries might be wary of European armed forces (yes, they are) but apparently not noticing that it didn’t not stop considerable military cooperation, including education and training exercises, between Arab regimes (including Gaddafi’s special elite security brigades) and European armed forces.
If we’re going to be a real bridge, we cannot be cut off from real understanding of what is happening in the region.
But it’s going to be difficult to persuade anyone that we have such understanding if our highest representatives communicate, instead, fundamental ignorance of Mediterranean culture and current events.
In 1993, I heard then president Ċensu Tabone, in an otherwise well-received speech, tell an audience which included Muslims: “When the Prophet Mohammed was inspired to write the Quran…”
He meant no insult but actually uttered blasphemy: for Muslims, the Quranic text, word for word, is of divine origin. In any case, Mohammed was actually illiterate. He never wrote anything down.
In 2009, I heard then president George Abela, in a speech that otherwise showed detailed knowledge of Malta-Egypt relations, suggest that the event being commemorated by the Egyptian national day (which was being celebrated) occurred in 1956, when it occurred in 1952.
And, only last month, in a speech celebrating Tunisia’s national day, President Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca asked the Tunisian ambassador to convey her greetings to President Moncef Marzouki, when Marzouki had been decisively rejected by Tunisians in an election just a few months ago.
None of these were mistakes made by individuals (least of all the presidents, who don’t usually write their own speeches). They were committed by institutions: the initial speechwriters and the people vetting the speeches (usually at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and/or the Office of the Prime Minister) for accuracy of facts and policy.
The fact that such mistakes were committed repeatedly, over several years, show that at least one factor is insufficient institutional attention to the region.
How can we seriously project Malta as a regional bridge if we suggest we haven’t even followed an election, much covered in the international press?
No vocation – not even deep-seated, personal religious ones – can flourish without appropriate preparation. Malta’s Mediterranean vocation, if it has one, cannot be taken seriously by anyone else if we don’t invest in the proper infrastructure.
Such an infrastructure would go beyond keeping up with what’s happening in the region, being able to come up with perceptive analyses and cultivating regional friendships such that we become valued for our address book.
It also means investing in the study of peace and the understanding of conflict and war and the scenarios that go with each. It’s all the work that’s done before a crisis breaks out – the reputation built up before then – that’s the most critical.
Small countries – like Finland, for example – have managed to develop an internationally-respected reputation for mediation precisely because their politicians invested in the appropriate institutions. If we are not really interested in doing that, it could well be an indication that, perhaps, we do not have a vocation to be a bridge, after all. In that case, we should stop pretending, at least to ourselves, to have one.
ranierfsadni@europe.com