Tonio’s Non-Metamorphoses

Was it a case of “Veni Vidi Vici”? Did the Commissioner designate “sail-through” the grilling that never was last Tuesday? Has the dinosaur really convinced the trough-addicted pigs of his inveterate submission to the constitutional bible of this “sui generis” system of state collaboration? There was a telling moment during the marathon session when Tonio Borg addressed his interlocutors and reminded them that in politics “perception is important”. Indeed. Perception nowadays is a huge part of the pie and politicians are as much made or broken by the creation of a hash tag (that’s twitter talk for a subject such as #BorgEU) than by anything else.

The speed with which media will deal with a story – compounded by technological Chinese whispers – not only means that a media avatar of a politician can be created with uncanny expeditiousness but also that such avatar might morph in accordance to the predominant push of whoever is throwing the most information into the system. Tonio Borg was contemporaneously both a victim and a victor of this kind of phenomenon. The time it took Borg to study the files and dossiers relating to his new “portofolio” (sic) the liberals-in-hiding got working with their European counterparts in order to  fill them in on the “true nature” of Tonio.

What “true nature”? Well they referred to Borg’s handling of immigration affairs, to his position on IVF and on divorce, to his consorting with the Gift of Life movement and to his previous stances on homosexual rights. The spiel essentially that Borg was an uncompromising imposer of conservative values and that his political activity clearly reflected this stance. The link to the Health and Consumer portfolio was not exactly tenuous and to put it mildly there WAS a point to be made. The point though was meant to be and should have been limited to the capacity of Tonio Borg to perform his duty as a Commissioner independently of his views – unlike his performance in Maltese politics where he had no problem mixing the two.

It’s the EU Law, Stupid

And this is where Tonio Borg built his defence. It was obvious from the start who had been involved in prepping the Commissioner designate. For all his protests that he was not “thinking as a lawyer” I’m prepared to safely bet that many a night was spent in the company of Simon Busuttil and a former EU Ambassador. Nothing wrong there either. The most telling moment was Tonio’s slight hesitation in reformulating the classic description of the European Law system – many a law student would have recognised that brief moment of panic when the explanation that was just at the tip of your tongue has rushed away only to return in the form of a rehash of the original definition “in your own words”. Hence Tonio and his version of “a sui generis system of international law and an agreement between sovereign states”. (He could also have quipped a happy 50th birthday to the Van Gend & Loos case while he was at it – much more important than the International Day of Courtesy in this part of the world).

The prepping was necessary because Tonio had to use every trick in the book (better known as “the treaties”) in order to justify his speedy metamorphoses from Maltese politician to European Commissioner. In doing so he highlighted the most difficult barrier that Europe faces with regards to social harmony. For while economic barriers have come crumbling down at a faster rate than the Visigoth invasion of Rome, social mores have found the borders of old to be less permeable. Subsidiarity that great concept first brought to the world in a Papal Encyclical came to the rescue and suddenly Tonio was raising the Commissioner’s equivalent of “taking the sixth”.

You’ve seen it all so no need to dwell on it. Dr Borg could get away with packaging his national performance in a tight corner by stating that he can not and will not be able to act similarly at an EU level because the rules that apply there are different. So for the sake of argument Tonio Borg’s catholic values will have to be put in abeyance whenever he is dealing with the Commission programs to promote the use of contraceptives. He claims not to have a problem with that and I guess that his conscience will deal with the “superior orders” dilemma in its own time.

Those Shoddy Liberals

Tonio Borg did not metamorphose. He remains the same man committed to the same principles (save maybe the gaffe regarding the gender quota ) a sudden rush of arse-licking could be a most simple explanation. Or even euphoria experienced with the sudden rush of endorphins at the realisation that the Liberal Inquisition was really conducted by a bunch of pussy-footed, ill-informed bungling radicals. That last point actually really got to me. For here we were – as my friend David Friggieri puts it – with a representative of the conservative parties (yes plural) in Malta in the dock and with no real prosecutor asking the real questions.

I’d have asked a simple question to Dr Borg. What does he think of the fact that a person who is a doctor in an EU country where abortion is legal and who performs a legal abortion on a Maltese woman (who has willingly travelled to his country and consented to such an operation) is criminally liable in Malta? Simple really. In case you are wondering it’s Article 5(1)(d) of the Criminal Code in combination with article 241(1). Incidentally once said doctor is condemned to a term of imprisonment for a term of eighteen months to three years, the willing patient also becomes liable to the same punishment. But I guess that’s OK because she’s Maltese anyway.

We did not get these questions. We got questions that were obviously fed to MEPs by the type of shoddy activists who base their accusations on hearsay and conspiracy theories rather than facts. How else do you explain that Dutch liberal’s question about contraceptives in Malta that was an invitation to Tonio Borg to eat her alive (which he did with the usual classy rhetoric of a PN politician who knows he has the upper hand).

A Metamorphoses?

In the end we have what the French call a “match nul” – which means a draw but the word “nul” also means “useless”. At an EU level Borg might not really “sail through” when the voting time comes. The ALDE (liberals) and European Greens have unsurprisingly called themselves out of any support vote – they’ll be voting against. The Popular Party will back him (and also heap lauds and praise that will be hyped in the relevant media). The socialists might dilly-dally for a while and make Tonio Borg (and Tonio Fenech and Simon Busuttil) sweat a little bit more but in the end they might just give in and vote him in after having asked for more “written commitments” from his part.

Tonio Borg did not really metamorphose in the end. His was no apostasy before the baying house of atheists and agnostics. This was more of a modern Give Unto Ceasar kind of business that left many of us Maltese questioning the use of a two-tier Europe when it comes to social rights. Yes the liberals – particularly the Maltese liberals – were bitten and if you are really fond of the term then they were “defeated”. Their defeat lies in the lack of organisation and lack of clarity. It lies in the lack of identifiable leaders who could take the battle to the next level. It lies in the fact that Maltese politics rarely translates into conservative vs liberal when push comes to shove.

That is why Joseph Muscat feels comfortable standing up in parliament without any hint of irony on his face and saying “I’m a liberal” while at the same time sanctioning the PN position on embryo freezing. Joseph will continue to woo the liberal fold that have elsewhere been described as the “ex-stricklandjani” so long as his credentials are not questioned and so long as he can be contrasted to the dinosaurs that have long camped in the mainstream parties.

Unfortunately for the silent liberal movement in Malta change will never come from within any of the two parties. So long as we continue putting our eggs in their basket they’ll be happy doing what they do best – fuck all. Because as we know so well : “if we want everything to change, then everything must remain the same”. And long life to our next EU Commissioner !

Pictor has scarcely set foot in paradise when he found himself standing before a tree that had two crowns. In the leaves of one was the face of a man.; in the leaves of the other, the face of a woman. Pictor stood in awe of the tree and timidly asked, “Are you the Tree of Life?”

Read also today’s article in the Times by Ranier Fsadni.