There are times when I despair at the silliness and frivolity of the world around me. The octogenarian Harold Camping, who made us feel a trifle uneasy last month with his so-called Rapture prediction of the end of days, has suffered a stroke. Not before, however, transferring his cataclysmic prediction to October 21 and, meanwhile, Italian Home Affairs Minister Roberto Maroni declared that Nato should stop its air strikes in order to staunch the haemorrhage of immigrants fleeing Libya. I cannot understand Mr Maroni and, as for his credibility, in my eyes, at least, it is flimsier than Mr Camping’s!
In Malta, we have the Pater Patriae, Edward, once known as Eddie, Fenech Adami, former Prime Minister and President, advising the government to block the divorce Bill because, he insists, rightly as it happens, that the referendum was merely consultative.
Yes, the government is perfectly within its rights to ignore the referendum result and take up the ex-President’s advice. However, all it will do is exacerbate the already-strained political equilibrium that exists precisely because of an ill-advised decision of the Nationalist Party as a party to take an official stand against divorce, a decision that, in my opinion, contributed to more people voting in favour of divorce out of sheer exasperation and annoyance. If the government reneges its responsibilities yet again at this stage and goes counter to the people’s will this would be tantamount to political hara-kiri.
The Church has taken a rather curious stand in all this with the Archbishop being the voice of caution and many of the laity being prophets of doom at best and breathing fire and brimstone at worst. Archbishop Paul Cremona’s position has always been very clear and unequivocal. He does not need hotlines to the Almighty or to anyone else, for that matter, to tell him what to do. He never resorted to either the dramatic and antediluvian utterances of his Gozo equivalent, or to the equivocations of his Vicar General and, still less, to the anti-constitutional urgings of his Judicial Vicar, not to mention the apocalyptic predictions of the rest of the gang.
There were, of course, notable exceptions, quiet voices of reason from the more intellectual members of the clergy. Yet, as Pius VII told Napoleon; the Church will survive despite and not in spite of its own ministers!
We all would like the divorce issue to be over and done with. We all wish to get on with our lives, lives that, believe you me, will not be so different if and when divorce legislation finally becomes a reality. We columnists are all fed up of the subject and, yet, because of this intransigence, we cannot turn our backs on the still unresolved issue at this stage despite what is going on around us, events that are far more dire than a passé issue like divorce.
As the savage fighting in and around Misurata continues unabated and Tripoli is bombed by Nato every day, a couple of warships use the Grand Harbour as a resting place while French fighter pilots are rumoured to have found a way to empty their fuel tanks in order to regularly request an emergency landing in Malta for their own reasons that are either gastronomic or sexual. Were it not, then it is either that French fighter jets are faulty, which I doubt, or that President Nicolas Sarkozy is getting his own back for our having thrown Napoleon out and is trying to embarrass us into taking a more active role in this now exasperatingly long drawn-out war of Gaddafian elimination. My own preference is gastronomic. A stuffat tal-fenek (rabbit stew) perhaps… or a timpana (past pie)?
Joking apart, at no time in recent years have I felt so vulnerable and so helpless. While Tripoli launches missiles trained towards the Tunisian border it will only be a matter of time, now that we have recognised Benghazi, that what is left of the Gaddafi regime will look around for a scapegoat and, while the Libyans may aim at poor long-suffering Lampedusa, it will be sod’s law that they will hit us instead. And then what? I cannot see Mr Maroni, who makes no secret of his anti-Melitan resentment, rushing to our aid like Lancelot du Lac.
Many of us heard and even felt a strange explosion and tremor that was not an earthquake last week, which, to date, remains a mystery. Are the Martians coming? Is the Kraken awakening? I doubt it. Could it have been a Tripolitanian missile that missed its mark and gave some deep sea creatures a highly disagreeable shock? But I digress.
Where and when will it all end? The bone of contention with Malta is all about its vast search and rescue area reflected in sea and sky. We may not be able to man a navy that can effectively patrol this area but there is no way we will give up our sovereignty to it. It is our common patrimony.
The skies rain money on us with each flying machine that criss-crosses it. We must never forget that this money-spinner is a vestige of 180 years of British rule. We cannot allow anyone, even fellow Round Table Knights, to get away with it and ride roughshod over our patrimony using the Libyan crisis as an excuse and I trust that ministers Tonio Borg and Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici will prove to be more than a match for Mr Maroni no matter what trumped up political excuse he may use. After all, remember, all’s fair in love and war.
kzt@onvol.net