Keep calm and be strong

I believe it was Margaret Thatcher who once said that being powerful “is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are… you aren’t.”

Coming from someone fondly known as ‘The Iron Lady’, and who also said (in reference to herself) “the lady’s not for turning”… I guess it says a lot about what Margaret Thatcher actually was and what she wasn’t. 

Still, as quotable quotes go this one is certainly true about power. People who wield real power don’t exactly need to inform others of this fact. The effects of their power will be felt, regardless of whether they themselves allude to it in any way. 

If, on the other hand, they blab on incessantly about how ‘powerful’ they are – like so many ministers who proclaim bold new initiatives, only for these to fizzle out within a few months – well, it’s a sure-fire sign that the real power is being wielded elsewhere.

In any case: I was reminded of that quote when newly appointed home affairs minister Carmelo Abela recently told a journalist that he was “calm, not weak”. 

“Do not mistake my calm demeanour for weakness”, he was quoted as saying. “I am strong, strong, STRONG! My armour is like tenfold shields! My teeth like swords! My claws, spears! The shock of my tail, a thunderbolt! My wings, a hurricane! And my breath… DEATH!”

Erm, hang on, no. That was Benedict Cumberbatch. Wrong movie. Still… personally I found Abela’s statement to be singularly revealing, if not exactly as rousing. It tells us a lot about how he sees himself, naturally… and how he thinks others perceive him. But it also tells us something about how we view our politicians; and how both sides in this mutual inspection parade might be looking for all the wrong things in all the wrong places.

What Abela said effectively amounted to a declaration of ‘non-weakness’…similar to the Thatcher quote, but in reverse. I know my looks and behaviour “may give rise to a perception of meekness”, he admitted; but don’t be fooled. I’m not as puny as I look.

Hmm. I’m still trying to work it out myself. If he really is ‘not as weak’ as the reputation for meekness that precedes him… what is the wisdom of drawing attention to it? Wouldn’t it be better to adopt Thatcher’s ‘lady’ motif, and let his non-weak actions speak instead of his weak words… whereupon words, strong or weak, become redundant anyway? 

Besides: by intimating that he may yet surprise us all by belying his ‘non-Chuck Norris looks’, Abela can only create high popular expectations from his ministry… on a few sizzling-hot issues which have proved too gargantuan even for entire governments (let alone individual ‘non-weak’ ministers) to administer properly.

Immigration. Detention. The Armed Forces. The Police. Recent events have illustrated how these pivotal policies and institutions all suffer from deep-rooted systemic flaws that are clearly beyond even the strongest of strong ministers to single-handedly rectify. In fact, not even Smaug, the chiefest and greatest of calamities, would stand a chance to sort out any of these problems on his own. 

Strength, on its own, does not avail for this task. It is the central government’s policy towards such matters that needs to change if the situation is to improve. And with regard only to immigration: lo and behold, there is not a jot of difference in practical terms between either Labour or Nationalist policy on this issue.

So I can’t help feeling it’s rather unwise on Abela’s part to imply that his mild-mannered exterior conceals some sort of Super-minister, just bursting to dive into the nearest phone-booth and emerge as a hero to save the day. Given the performance of the last four of his predecessors in that particular ministry – and the shocking state they left all those institutions in today – by rights we shouldn’t really have any expectations of him at all. 

Perhaps I am a pessimist, but to me it sounds uncomfortably like the precursor to a later admission that the problem really was simply too big for one man – however strong or powerful – to solve. And that, in many respects, is a reasonably accurate description of the situation Carmelo Abela has now inherited. A full-blown institutional crisis, now lain at the door of a man who sounds as though he is painfully conscious that most people consider him the wrong man for the job.

But hey! “Most people” have at times been known to be wrong, you know (just ask Simon Busuttil, he keeps reminding us of this every day). And this brings me to another interesting aspect of the ‘I am Not Weak’ declaration. It also draws attention to Malta’s disproportionate attraction to ‘strength’ in local politicians… regardless if this perceived ‘strength’ actually delivers any results or not.

If Abela feels his looks work against him as home affairs minister, it is probably because (no offence, or anything) he does indeed exude a certain placidity that seems altogether out of place in its volcanic political setting. I certainly don’t recall Abela ever throwing any tantrums, banging his fist on any tables, rousing a mass meeting to a frenzy, or anything similar. Place him between Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Beppe Fenech Adami during a discussion on Xarabank, and the boldest thing he’d do is probably ask Peppi Azzopardi for an aspirin. 

And let’s face it: people do expect a small tantrum every now and again. We’ve been raised to believe that no issue can be properly debated if you can actually hear every argument as it is being made. The whole point of a political debate is in fact to ensure that nobody hears anything at all, and that there’s at least one minor punch-up to keep the audience ratings healthy. ‘Calm’ features nowhere in the list of things a Maltese politician is expected to be… and it is clear that Abela is conscious of this fact, and might even be conditioned by it.

But this tells us more about how we ourselves perceive ‘political strength’. It is chiefly the external trappings of ‘strength’ that interest us: the purely visual and purely audio reference points we have come to associate with ‘strong’ politicians over the years. Physical presence. Commanding voice. Air of authority. The ability to shout down an adversary, or ride roughshod over all opposition. And maybe a horseshoe buckle to complete the image. Yes, that’ll do nicely…

Take all these cues to their logical conclusion, and what you’ll be left with is roughly another Dom Mintoff: perhaps the epitome of the kind of ‘strength’ Abela had in mind.  

But then… how would any of that actually help in resolving an institutional crisis? How many successful institutional reforms do you remember having been achieved by thumping on tables, shouting on television, or lording over a press conference like a rooster on a garbage heap? 

I would have thought the past few weeks alone would have put paid to all that. The sort of ‘political strength’ so many people evidently hanker after with nostalgia – enough for a newly appointed minister to be apologetic about not possessing it – has very little to show for itself after all these years. It certainly did not solve the issues with the police or the AFM: instead, it compounded them. 

As for ‘being tough’ with migrants – as most people would certainly expect from Carmelo Abela – well, what has that achieved in practice… except a couple of migrants killed in detention, a mountain of abuse, and an epidemic of mental illness and suicide attempts? Migration itself has not stopped because a ham-fisted Maltese politician said a few hard-hitting words here and there. It is not in the nature of trans-Continental mass-movements of people to be deterred by a random barking MP.

Things might change a little, however, if we start adapting our own expectations of politicians to actually suit the problems they will have to try and solve. Would a ‘strong politician’ do a better job than a ‘non-weak’ one with any of the challenges in Abela’s portfolio? No particular reason to think so. Many of those problems are simply hangovers from the days when politicians were, in fact, too strong. 

And where political brawn and machismo have all very evidently failed… why not try calm instead? Why not adopt a more clinical, less hysterical, less tub-thumping approach? Who knows, maybe we’d actually be able to hear ourselves think about these issues for a change. 

But still: you’re going to need a little strength, too, if you’re going to go wading into something as thorny, prickly and messy as a head-on collision with all the rot in Malta’s law enforcement capability. 

So enough with all this ‘Mr Meek’ geekiness, Carmelo. Dig deep and find some of ths strength you never knew you had. And above all, stop putting yourself down like that. 

Just repeat after me: “My armour is like tenfold shields! My teeth like swords! My claws, spears! And I am strong, strong STRONG…!”