Not since the millennium bug has a collective feeling of terror and apprehension proved so baseless. I went to work last Wednesday to find my colleagues united in their fear of what was about to happen.
By the afternoon the island would be flooded with world leaders, journalists and security people. All the roads would be closed, getting home would be impossible, and we would have to spend the night huddled up in the corridor.
Only this particular apocalypse turned out to be rather a damp squib. There was no traffic mayhem, and we were largely free to get on with our lives. The flocks of journalists in particular seemed reluctant to say or write anything. The coverage of the summit in the international press was minimal at best.
Certainly the majestic name ‘Valletta Summit’ was nowhere to be seen. If at all, the few reports that there were mumbled something about ‘leaders meeting in Malta’. As is, people have to meet somewhere.
One is tempted to dismiss the summit as an expensive mid-week Indian-summer break. If it were a lucky day, it would be a one-night stand between two ships that pass in the night and steam on (or rather don’t). Still, one wouldn’t wish to be too unromantic. The whole thing did teach us a thing or two.
We now know, for example, that the Prime Minister can throw a party, especially when he’s not paying. It may have had vulgarity and pomp written all over it, but a good party it was nonetheless. There was a labyrinth of red carpets, a son et lumière, and even a porter scene in the shape of a one-minute silence. In sum, a Tannhäuser march short of an Edwardian durbar – and that’s just the bit the low-caste commoners got to see.
We also know Joseph Muscat has a mastery over the elements. The hapless Eddie Fenech Adami had to contend with gale-force winds and lashing rain for his 1989 Bush-Gorbachev summit. Not so Muscat, who got two days of the most glorious weather we’ve seen in several weeks. Godspeed, good Sir.
Beyond that, things get choppy. It is not entirely clear what the summit has achieved, if anything at all.
Let’s get the funny bit out of the way. The so-called ‘trust fund’ would be misguided if it had a thousand times more meat on it. Migration is not something you expect to go away by throwing money at. When that money is something shy of €2bn, things get laughable.
The bright lights of Valletta will be entirely wasted if we let events such as the Paris attacks degenerate into yet another round of Fortress Europe pointlessness
The Prime Minister told us Malta is among the biggest per capita contributors. Now Malta has pledged €250,000, the equivalent of an average night down at the Super 5 offices. Which means he told us that the trust fund is mouldy peanuts.
It reminded me of a little story of a Valletta man who couldn’t stand the sound of the street organ (terramaxka). Whenever the blessed thing stopped outside his house, he would give something extra to the player and ask him to take his art elsewhere. Only this time it’s the opposite of something extra, and in any case the player is unlikely to go away.
There’s also something profoundly wrong about giving money, however little of it, to the very architects of a number of sub-Saharan refugee crises. A couple of them were there on the steps of Castille, keeping a straight face during the one-minute silence. These people are old hands at siphoning aid money into their pockets, and bloodied hands at dealing with anyone who tries to stop them from doing so. Which is also why so many people risk their lives trying to move elsewhere.
There’s an echo of what happened in 2010, when European nations (Malta included) cosied up to Muammar Gaddafi for one last cuddle, and left the hundreds of thousands of migrants in Libya at his mercy. Only he didn’t have much of that virtue, and neither do some of the leaders we saw being ferried about in black limos last week.
Be that as it may, I also have doubts about the real-life consequences of such high-profile meetings. Thing is, for all the hype and drama, the summit left most people in Malta cold and detached. If that was the case in such a small place, one has to wonder what impact the summit might possibly have at the decision-making level in African towns and villages.
I find it hard to imagine that the average migrant, fed up with corrupt regimes and fuelled by desires of El Dorado, will be at all affected. I’m not saying that high-level politics is irrelevant, because it isn’t. My point is to wonder just how much of it will be lost in translation.
The other day I had a conversation with someone whose understanding and experience of migration matters are among the best in the field. He pointed out that the summit should not be assessed in terms of immediate outcomes. Rather, it was a small part of a process that had the potential to bring nations together in some kind of common commitment to basic decency.
In that sense, the bright lights of Valletta may not have been entirely wasted. They will be, if we let events such as the attacks in Paris two days ago, degenerate into yet another round of Fortress Europe pointlessness.
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