There’s one in every family, as Zazu in The Lion King sagely remarked 23 years ago. Mufasa had Scar, his shifty, scheming brother. The European People’s Party (EPP) has Victor Orbán, Hungary’s increasingly colourful Prime Minister.
Last week, the EPP held its congress in Malta and Orbán stuck out like a suppurating thumb. Andrej Plenkovic, the Prime Minister of Croatia, warned against giving the floor to “populist demagogues and those who do not speak the truth”. And who took the floor right after him? Victor Orbán.
Orbán painted an apocalyptic picture of a Europe riven by crises. But his direst warnings were about migration. Blithely ignoring that almost all recent terrorist attacks in Europe and America were by home-grown radicalised misfits, he intoned that migration was the “trojan horse of terrorism”.
Conveniently forgetting that most anti-Semitic attacks in Europe are the work of true-blue European far-right fascists, Orbán deftly wielded anti-Muslim rhetoric to invoke the spectre of a rise in anti-Semitism. And all in the name of Europe’s Christian heritage!
If I ever were to become an atheist, it would be because of people like Orbán.
I call on my government to offer refuge to Syrian families who would otherwise die. Let Malta do for Syrians what it did for Libyans in 2011, and for Balkan children in the 1990s
He even suggested that the European Court of Human Rights should be reformed – by which read muzzled – since its judgements were a threat to security in Europe and an invitation to the migrant ‘horde’. EU foreign policy should not be driven by Europe’s values but should focus on ‘stability’. No reference to its Christian heritage here.
Fortunately, Orbán was a lone voice during this EPP congress. Manfred Weber, chairman of the EPP group, and the other EPP leaders including Simon Busuttil, stressed that painting such an unrelentingly dire picture of Europe in crisis was simply unfair, alienated people, weakened Europe and its member countries, and did not serve to find the right solutions.
Donald Trump and the Brexiteers used the same tactics of fear and hatred to win, and now look where they risk taking their countries.
Donald Tusk, the president of the EU Council, put it best: people do not want endless talk about crises, but wise, moral and strong leadership. Can the EPP deliver?
Cry for Syria
They have gassed babies and children. This is not collateral damage from an air-strike. It is deliberate annihilation by the foulest of means. In Syria, the spiral to hell continues, and the UN Security Council has met again, to repeat the same condemnations for the same ignored commitments.
The Russian ambassador sits stony-faced, and the American ambassador replays her moral indignation. The members of the Security Council pirouette around the insanity of a civil war that could suck them all in.
President Trump has taken unilateral military action, risking an escalation with the pro-Syrian Russians. And suddenly Malta’s perspective changes: Syria is not some distant brawl between strangers, but a bomb that could explode next door.
Malta does not have the political, financial or military clout to make an impact on this unending tragedy. But it can show humanitarian leadership.
I call on my government to offer refuge to Syrian families who would otherwise die. Let Malta do for Syrians what it did for Libyans in 2011, and for Balkan children in the 90s. If Prime Minister Muscat truly wants Malta to renew its vocation as the Nurse of the Mediterranean, let it not be only for rich medical tourists.
Let Malta take up its humanitarian responsibilities as a sovereign nation. Otherwise where is our national pride, our self-respect, our honour?
Bronze blob on the bastion
Have you seen this government’s latest contribution to culture? Perching precariously on the edge of the Central Bank car park is a nameless bronze folly that has cost more than a third of a million euro.
From one angle it looks like a prickly pear gone berserk following an acute attack of acrophobia. From another it reminds me of the Hand of Sauron looming over Middle-Earth at the end of the Lord of the Rings book. Which is awkward for the government, since that was the sign of Sauron’s final defeat.
The one thing it does not look like is an eternal flame. But it certainly shares some DNA with the monumental odes to the gigantic egos of bygone Communist Block dictators and North Korea’s Kim dynasty that litter their countries. Is that why the government originally wanted this thing for Dom Mintoff?
Seriously now, should it not have been obvious from the beginning that Mintoff deserved a regular statue at Castille along with the great and the good in Maltese politics? He is certainly one of the former.
Let’s organise a competition to help the government decide what to name this bronze blob on the bastion. The first prize will be a day trip to Gozo, where they really know how to do modern street sculpture.
Otherwise, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat risks unveiling a fitting monument to his government’s hubris and shambolic dilettantism, amid the sycophantic cries of delight of his inner circle.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Dom’s eternal bajtra.