ToonToday:Election circus

Editorial • 08 December 2002

Standing up for the Maltese flag … at sea

Nothing excites a Maltese more than a local feud or a political debate between two irrelevant Maltese politicians. To Joe Bloggs international politics is boring and uninspiring. Metropolitan themes are far more piquant.

Surveys carried out in the printed media confirm that foreign pages in Maltese newspapers are the least read.

Tragedies in the Middle East, news reports on Iraqi dictators who equate acid baths with dissidents and analysis of US presidential stunts fail to generate spasms in Maltese readers.

Spain’s northern beaches and oil spills with the hundreds of dying seabirds and mammals fail to attract attention, until the Maltese factor reappears like a phoenix.

Now we know that Maltese flagged tankers are being refused entry into Spanish and Portuguese ports.

The Maltese flag is an easy target. The political Juans and the Pedros can be seen to be doing something to erase the memory of the nothing they had done before.

The political reaction to the breaking up of the Prestige, a single-hulled Bahamas registered vessel is fuelled by electoral considerations. Something spectacular must be done and the Maltese flag is already associated with the Erika disaster: just the thing to deed the media.

The French Navy has also sailed out shooing a Maltese tanker out of French waters.

It's outstanding hypocrisy and media spin. We say this, because, in the fuss over single-hulled tankers, over 70 per cent of all floating vessels, are sealed by an Brussel based agreement which Malta and Cyprus have committed themselves to respect at all cost.

That is, that by the year 2015 (in 12 years time) all single-hulled tankers will be phased out and replaced by double hulled or something to that effect.

The European Union’s original proposal was 2026, Malta supported the 2015 proposal. Are we to believe that there are no single-hulled tankers in the French, Spanish and Portugese fleets? As you can all imagine this is not the case.

Malta’s fleet is the second largest in Europe and depends on European ports. Today, the percentage of Maltese vessels impounded in ports is down from some 18 to 7 per cent.

What is more interesting is that the Prestige was not even noted as a vessel on the white list – that is a vessel not in the danger list.

Inspections on Malta’s Maritime fleet have improved since the Erika tragedy on the Morbihan coast of Bretagne - surely more needs to be done. Are we expected to be ahead of international requirements?

Needless to say, though direct income from the maritime fleet only contributes one per cent to Malta’s GDP in real terms the spill over (to use a dirty word) effect is far greater.

We need to keep this fleet and we need to support efforts to embrace high standards within the Maltese fleet. But in doing so, we should support Malta when it accuses Spain and Portugal of unfair treatment. The silly reports on Super One aimed at embarrassing Malta combine shoddy reporting with inverted patriotism.

This is stuff that makes Malta’s foreign policy worthy of its name. Go for it, guys. Above all don't take it lying down.