Be afraid. Be very afraid…

Amazing, isn't it? Some people out there are busy working themselves up into a tizzy over the mere possibility that Anglu Farrugia may one day become Deputy Prime Minister... while at same time choosing not to notice that the person currently occupying that same position is... TONIO BORG. Aaaaargh!

Hmmmm. Excuse me for asking, folks, but: why aren't you all panicking? Why haven't you torched your own homesteads, and set off full tilt for the nearest hills? Maybe because there aren't any hills to actually run to? Or perhaps you just don't find the guy quite as scary as I do...

Oh, OK, I admit that Dr Borg - Foreign Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Born Again Defender of Sharia Law to boot - may not be the most overtly frightening presence one shall ever have to contend with. And I mean that most sincerely, by the way. I have been present in the same room as Dr Borg, and contrary to various reports I did not really wet my pants in sheer, unadulterated terror of the man (there was another reason for that little incident, but I'll explain it some other time). Actually, let me go one step further, and acknowledge that Tonio Borg is actually a rather pleasant person with whom to engage in any form of direct dealing: soft-spoken, invariably polite, and usually quite unlike the aggressive, barking frenzy we have almost come to expect from government exponents when talking in public these days (for further details, look under: Independence Day Celebrations, Fosos, Floriana, 2011).

However: as a rule I tend to pay more attention to deputy prime ministers than to potential deputy prime ministers, when one or the other category chooses to make public statements. And with good reason, too. For unlike their potential equivalents, the things that present incumbents say are normally indicative of the sort of policies you can expect their governments to enact.... not in some unlikely distant future, but right here and now, during the present government's term of office, with results that can have serious consequences on the entire country.

So when Tonio Borg addressed a MEUSAC meeting this week, and casually told his audience that we should not be afraid of 'Islamic democracy' in nearby Libya, I sat bolt upright and paid attention. For a start, because I found it interesting that Malta's Foreign Minister would strike such a discordant note among his European equivalents: who by and large voiced their own people's genuine concerns (whether justified or not is another story) at the possibility of an Islamic theocracy springing up right here on our doorstep.

And yes, I do admit it might be just a little unfair to pass such early judgment on a government that has yet to actually form... as well as on a State that is still picking up the pieces of such a violent and bloody birth. But like many others in this country and beyond, I was dismayed (if not exactly surprised) to hear that Libya - previously a secular country, for all its other flaws - would choose to go down the same path as 'liberated' Afghanistan. You know the path I mean: the one that leads to Christian converts having to flee for their lives, after being threatened with execution as a result of wars waged in the name of 'freedom'.  Oh, and of course I hardly tell you what ghastly fate might befall the poor citizen who publicly expressed disbelief in any form of religion whatsoever...

But back to Tonio Borg's pearls of democratic wisdom, when 'facing the MEUSAC' this week. There was nothing wrong with 'Islamic democracy', he argued; after all, we ourselves have 'Christian democracy', and... well... just look at us.

Ouch! Don't know about you, but that sort of reminded me of that classic (and most likely apocryphal) newspaper classified ad, which went something like: 'Why go somewhere else to be cheated, when you can come right here?' And just like the unintentional slip in that particular sentence structure, Borg's candid comparison tells us infinitely more about our own homegrown problems, than anything that will one day trouble our neighbour to the South.

The trouble, you see, is that Tonio Borg is perfectly right. Why should any Maltese citizen begrudge Libya its own 'democratic' version of a theocracy... when that's exactly what we have right in Malta? And very generously, our deputy prime minister even laid down the basic conditions for Libya's budding 'people's theocracy', too.

It's OK to have a State founded on what particular religion, Borg argued... so long as 'the rights of everybody else' are respected.

Ah, whoopee. And they all lived happily ever after, till the end of their days, etc. There are of course, two niggling little problems with that assertion. One: what gives Tonio Borg such conviction that an Islamic democracy will in future respect the rights of non-Muslims on an equal footing? After all, no such guarantees have been given in Afghanistan, or for that matter Iraq... where the local Catholic population (mong other non-Muslim minorities) has been decimated following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2004?

And speaking of equal footing... how can 'everybody's rights' be 'equally respected', when the entire State was formed on the basis that some citizens are automatically more equal than others?

Ah, bless. This is the thing I actually love about our present deputy prime minister... and yes, I imagine it would be a shame if he were ever to be replaced by Anglu Farrugia (or indeed anyone else). For Tonio Borg has a unique tendency to argue both sides of a case at one and the same time... though I somehow doubt he ever realizes it. Being himself a Christian democrat, he obviously sees no contradiction in a Constitution that on the one hand promises equal rights to all its citizens... and on the other elevates one category (i.e., his own) to 'special status' at the expense of all others. It doesn't occur to him that the privileges conferred upon Catholicism (Catholicism, please note; not even Christianity) by Malta's Constitution are themselves demeaning and insulting to a growing population of Maltese non-Catholics. For like all intrinsic theocrats - Christian, Muslim, Hindu, at this level it doesn't actually make a difference - Tonio Borg firmly believes that if something is beneficial to his own religious denomination, then by definition it is automatically beneficial to everyone. So he will justify the otjerwise dangerous and worrying development of a fledgling theocracy appearing overnight on our doorstep, by unwittingly drawing our attention to the fact that... well, let's face it: we're not so much better ourselves.

Absolutely bloody marvellous, I must say. But hey! At least he isn't Anglu Farrugia...