|
Central heating in central Europe is not a privilege for the well to do. You discover the pleasures of a warm home, unlike Malta where a central heating system is far too expensive to install, maintain and pay for.
The other week, together with old friends, in the comfort of a heated apartment in icy Germany we laughed over a book describing how often we mishear the words and lyrics in songs.
The Hot Chocolate song ‘You sexy thing’ comes tops as the most misheard song of all, with thousands of listeners thinking that Jamaican-born vocalist Errol Brown was singing ‘I believe in Malcolm’ instead of ‘I believe in Miracles’.
Life is all about mishearing words. It is bad enough we do not understand the meaning of words, but to confuse them with another word is venial.
Solidarity, in the Christian psyche, is something we not only misinterpret but never seem to fully comprehend. The inexcusable side to this story is not that we do not hear, but that we refuse to understand because we are blinkered.
Errol Brown is dark skinned. In the eyes of most Maltese that is okay, but not if Errol was a migrant. He is Jamaican-born, and an MBE, which reads as a Member of the British Empire. Now that means that Errol Brown is one rank below Mintoffian collaborator Bertu Mizzi, who is an Officer of the British Empire despite the fact that Brown has given infinitely more to Britain than good old Bertie.
Now just imagine for a minute, if Errol Brown MBE were to paddle his way to Malta in an inflatable without a passport, and introduce himself to the Brigadier in his usual ‘I believe in Malcolm’ argot. He would, would he not, be transferred to one of Tonio Borg’s detention centres.
Tonio Borg, who I very much hope is having a warm and very meaty Christmas, knows that the majority of Maltese are foursquare behind his detention policy. And he finds the greatest accolade from that neo-fascist grouping led by leaders who could easily conceal themselves as Arab Druze militia.
It is cold and wet in the detention centres, but I cannot say what level is the intensity of cold and humidity there, because Tonio Borg has decreed not to let the media in. It is one of his wisest decisions, similar to when he planned to ram down our throats a demand by that one man show, the Gift of Life, to inscribe No to abortion into the Constitution.
Borg appears to be coming round in allowing the media in now, saying on national television he will organise a tour for journalists.
The last time I was invited to an organised tour was ugly Bucharest in 1983. It was the era of Ceausescu, the communist tyrant the West loved to praise. At the time the demagogue Ceausescu, who treated his people like pigs in a detention centre, was anti-Soviet, so it followed that he was on the side of the West.
They have asked me to be nice on Christmas day. They say Christmas is a time to forget, but one cannot forget the sad report by retired Judge Depasquale and the equally pitiable ovation it received from the Home Affairs Minister who would have done us all a favour if he had said nothing.
The same applies to the Prime Minister, who said he will stand by his Brigadier.
The news reports said the PM the Brigadier’s employment was safe, obviously meaning he had no reason to resign.
In normal circumstances, the Brigadier would have had enough sense to resign. And then, as is the tradition, a spin-doctor would surface and paste the Brigadier’s intention on the front page of the Sunday Times.
The rest is history.
Well, we should not be too surprised if the Brigadier chooses not to resign and we should not be too distressed if Depasquale, always remembered for his ‘dynamism’ as a judge, blames the media for the incidents.
When all is lost with government, we naturally turn to the Opposition, and I tell you… one really wants to cry.
Someone who needs his head examined told me Gavin Gulia is the natural replacement to Alfred Sant. Gulia stood by the report and the soldiers and basically replicated what Tonio Borg had been saying all throughout. You listen to other Labour spokesmen and you start believing that Tonio Borg is a liberal rather than a neo-conservative in a pinstriped suit.
The Labour party has such a feeble stand on ‘racism’ and ‘asylum policy’ that one would believe that their policy reads something “one for all, all for the vote.”
But back to Gavin: Gavin is the kind of guy who, you ask yourself, ‘why does someone who speaks like a Nationalist, act like a Nationalist, looks like a Nationalist, stand as a Labour candidate?’
Beats me. All I can say is that I have met more Labourites who sound like raging xenophobes than Nationalists.
Which leaves me with no one to turn to but the Church. Now I try very hard never to drag the Church into this column. The history of the Church in the lives and times of oppressed peoples is not something you gloat about.
When slavery was abolished in the US in 1865, the Vatican was still in denial and Pope Pius IX went as far as sending a crown of thorns to defeated Confederate US leader Jefferson Davis, a proponent of slavery, the thorns implying that Davis had been “crucified”.
In its very long history, the Church – not its people – have very often, far too often, been on the wrong side of humanity. It is a harsh statement but history confirms it.
But then today’s Church is supposedly different, more humane, so that is why one would expect the Church to hit out from the pulpits at our unadulterated views of ‘migrants’.
It is Christmas, and as we sit down to feast once again, the one thing we ask for is for the Church to talk about the xenophobia that plagues this country and has taken over the minds and souls of some our politicians.
It is a wish that many of us who have lost faith in the political class yearn for.
This country has few intellectuals, a media which is increasingly based on daytime TV and teleshopping, and news journalists who are governed by money and parochial politics.
The Church could be our Saviour on this.
It is Christmas and the last person who can put on an act and write some redundant précis on something truly soppy is yours truly. I apologise profusely if I have not been in tune with all the rest.
But I do wish all of you in this Malta of Today the most important thing of all: good health!
The rest I am afraid is all irrelevant.
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
|
