Grilled Brincat with honesty sauce

Funny things seem to happen to Maltese politicians travelling to Brussels these days. It is almost as though the Malta-Belgium flight path traverses some kind of invisible chink in the space-time continuum - a sort of interdimensional portal, if you will - so that the person stepping off the plane in Brussels will not be exactly the same person who had boarded in Luqa only a couple of hours earlier.

Oh, they might look, sound and even act the same… but you can rest assured that something weird will have taken place internally during the flight. It’s a bit like transiting from one time-zone to another: only it’s not so much your watch that has to be reset, as your entire outlook on life.

Only for a short while, however. On the return flight, the transformed politician will inevitably pass back though the same portal again. And lo and behold! The person stepping off the plane back in Malta will be exactly the same as the one who originally boarded before the mid-flight transformation (and that’s probably just as well, as otherwise it would wreak untold havoc at Passport Control…)

But whatever the cause of this mysterious phenomenon, its effects on the travelling Maltese politician tend to be remarkably beneficial. Take the strange case of ‘Dr Tonio and Mr Borg’, for instance. You may recall how the man who was Justice Minister for years under successive Nationalist administrations – and who, in that capacity, launched endless crusades to protect the unborn child from all the things that were already illegal under Maltese law – was one day nominated for the post of European Commissioner.

The selection process for European Commissioners involves a ‘grilling’ by the European Parliament… in other words, the nominees find themselves talking to people who weren’t necessarily dipped into a cauldron of magical pro-life potion at birth; people whose views on this complex issue are radically different from the simplistic, uncompromising arguments we tend to hear at home.

Given how vocal Dr Borg used to be on the topic – not to mention that the portfolio in question was ‘Health’ - some of the questions inevitably touched on female reproductive rights. This was, after all, the same Tonio Borg who argued that Malta’s abortion law should be entrenched in the Constitution, so that future generations would find it hard to amend. And Malta’s abortion law threatens women with imprisonment for that particular offence: a view that many MEPs would consider abhorrent.

Naively, I expected Tonio Borg to give the same sort of answers he always gave when speaking in front of a Maltese audience. But nothing of the kind. Clearly, the man we all know by that name had undergone a subtle transformation between the parallel universes of Malta and Brussels… and the Brussels version suddenly found himself mimicking the same moderate line his Maltese counterpart had spent years attacking in public.  

I need hardly add that this ‘new’ Dr Tonio Borg was a vast improvement over the one whose identity he clearly assumed. Had he consistently advocated a similar position throughout his time as justice minister, there would quite simply never have been a controversy over his nomination at all.

And this week, we all saw another example of this remarkable phenomenon in action. Until just a couple of weeks ago, ‘Leo Brincat’ was just the same old ‘Leo Brincat’ we’d all got to know over the years. And seeing as how – alongside Joe Debono Grech - he is one of the last surviving relics of the 1980’s Labour administration… that’s quite a few years we’re talking about here.

Now, I don’t think I’m alone in stating that the Leo Brincat we all saw and heard at the European Parliamentary hearing this week was not exactly the same as the one we’ve heard so often back home. Many have remarked a conspicuous difference in the tone, flavour and (most important of all) substance of what he said before the EP’s Public Accounts Committee... especially, this part here:

“I considered resigning [over the Panama Papers issue] but it didn’t make sense, because that would only make you a voice in the wilderness. It could make you a hero for a day, and be despised by others ... but ultimately it only renders you without a voice. But by continuing to work within the structures, you are in a position to exert influence internally.”

And there you have it: proof that the Brussels/Malta transformation theory is indeed correct. When on earth have we ever heard Leo Brincat quoting David Bowie in Parliament before? Yet there he was, nonchalantly uttering what turned out to be almost a verbatim poetical rendition of ‘Heroes’:  ‘We could be heroes, just for one day… [but] we’re nothing, and no one can help us…’

Uncanny. No other word to describe it...

And that’s before you stop to consider the point Brincat was actually making; before you compare it to anything he – or any other MP, from either side, at any point in the last 50 years – had ever said on Maltese soil before.

Imagine Leo Brincat saying the exact same words to a crowd of Labour Party supporters at a mass meeting. It would be considered the ultimate betrayal - the equivalent of declaring that the only reason to still consider oneself a member of the Labour Party, is that the alternative is to be nothing at all.

That’s some admission, you know. Gone in a flash are all the vacuous soundbites we have come to expect from a typical political speech – all the meaningless allusions to ‘party unity’, ‘the glorious party history’, and similar claptrap - and in their place, a stark and a brutally honest assessment of the ultimate failure of the Maltese party political album.

Small wonder Leo Brincat (Brussels version) would quote from David Bowie’s darkest and most tormented phase. For the astonishingly bleak vision he outlined for those MEPs attests to a total collapse of the system on at least two counts. Having made the point that ‘resignation’ is futile in a Maltese context, because it only robs you of a platform to make your voice heard… he went on to explain that ‘making one’s voice heard’ is equally pointless in the long run. In his own words:  “By continuing to work within the structures, you are in a position to exert influence internally…”

Well, we can all appreciate the fruit of all this ‘pressure’ Leo Brincat has so tirelessly exerted on his government with regard to the Panama Papers case. The entire issue was that Konrad Mizzi had been exposed by that scandal, yet unaccountably retained a place within the Cabinet of Ministers. Initially we were told that he had been stripped of his energy portfolio… yet even this tiny, insignificant gesture turned out to be a ruse.

All these months later, Mizzi is very evidently still Malta’s energy minister. He still fronts the Muscat administration in all its international energy dealings, and he still announces all the latest developments in the sector as if they were part of his own portfolio (because that, ultimately, is what they still are).

Looking back at Brincat’s declarations in the European Parliament this week, and I find myself struggling to imagine a more accurate description of the sheer pointlessness of party politics at any level at all. Sift through the individual words, and you are confronted by a veritable choice of nothingness. If you dare to speak your mind and criticise your own party, you will be banished as an outcast, a miscreant, a traitor and a wacko… without actually having any noticeable impact on any given issue.

The only other option is to keep your misgivings to yourself and toe the party  line… and oh, look. The result is exactly the same. Just look at the impact Brincat’s principled stand actually had on the issue. In all honesty, a ‘voice in the wilderness’ would have achieved more.

All of which reinforces my view that Brussels – for whatever unearthly reason – is actually good for local politicians. It does wonders for their perspective on things.  Maybe it’s the constant drizzle and greyness… or maybe it’s the beer - most of which is about 4% stronger than anything we’re used to locally. But once they step off that plane, all the accumulated layers of Maltese political bullshit seem to magically come unstuck in one moment… and briefly, ever so briefly, we get a rare glimpse of what politicians would actually be like in this country, if their behaviour wasn’t so brutally curtailed and controlled by an aggressive party machine.

Tonio Borg, for instance, would have been a moderate conservative without a streak of extremism anywhere in his DNA. Leo Brincat would have been a conscientious dissident, tirelessly pointing out his own party’s flaws and shortcomings from within the party’s own structures. And presumably, John Dalli would have swept all the prizes at every edition of the annual Malta Transparency and Accountability Awards...

Sadly, however, it always proves to be a fleeting illusion. We all subliminally know that only one of those two conflicting personae can possibly be real. And statistically, it is far likelier to be the one who always behaved consistently for years… than the one who suddenly changed tune for the benefit of a new audience, and to match a new political reality.

We also know – or should at least strongly suspect by now - that the likeliest scenario by far is that both these assumed identities are equally fake. No ‘interdimensional portals’ or mid-flight transformations are actually necessary to explain the phenomenon: just a simple acknowledgement that politics in Malta is itself nothing but a huge act… and that even the actors themselves have finally given up the pretence that it isn’t.