J'accuse: This Sorry State

 

This article and accompanying Bertoon appear in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday (25.10.2009).

It may have dragged on for much longer than it was worth, but this whole apology spin has not yet been milked dry by the masters of marketing and campaigners of progress alike. That should therefore mean that, as an opinion columnist (and I choose my words very carefully here), I am fully entitled to dedicate a whole column to the very issue that is fast turning into yet another scene in the big road show that is our local political arena.

The bespectacled poet of dubious dress taste once wrote (and performed) a whole song declaiming the various difficulties that we encounter whenever we are pressed to announce our contrition for acts we have committed (or for acts to which we feel in some way connected). Elton John, for that is the poet of whom I speak, concluded that the five-letter word rhyming with lorry seems to be the hardest word. It’s sad. So sad. A sad, sad situation too, but when it comes to saying this word, we stumble on all sorts of problems and even the most talkative of persons might become a convinced stammerer before the merest hint of the initial consonant departs from betwixt his tightly held incisors.

Caveat lector (let the reader beware)

Now, before I embark on an examination of this entirely novel and uninteresting fetish that has gripped the Maltese population with the same speed as a Catherine wheel firework lighting up in the Zurrieq festa, I must perforce put all my cards on the table and make it absolutely clear that mine is not a quibble with the events happening on that day that has come to be known by later generations as Black Monday. Lest any word-twister were to attempt to misinterpret my later words in this column, let me as of now share with you my disgust at the ignoble feats of men who deserve no place among their species, my empathy that goes out to all those who suffered directly and indirectly as a result of such mindless acts and my solidarity – past, present and future – with anyone who suffered or ever suffers at the hands of such numbskull imbeciles who believe that violence is a solution.

It is already a sad fact in itself that I have to go to this extreme of having to explain that I disagree with/condemn/dislike/abhor the violent acts perpetuated in the past – from the burning of The Times’ buildings, to the inhuman invasion of privacy of the Fenech Adami household, to the sacking of the Archbishop’s Curia to the killing of a young girl by means of a parcel bomb. Why I should have to say that I am not the kind of person to condone such acts – and why all of the above should not be obvious to anyone – is one of the modern-day mysteries that we inherit from the ultra-intelligent exchanges in the MLP-PN dialectic.

So I hope that is clear. Mine is not an examination of whether one of the above-mentioned events is more important or more worthy of an apology than the other but rather a query into how and why we are asked to remember such events today and, more importantly, what this whole commotion on the issue of apology is worth in real terms, once the veil of political expediency falls to the ground. The reader has been warned.

What do I have to do to make you want me?

Correct me if I am wrong (and I never said that I was always right), but was it not Joseph Muscat who defined his apology regarding the events of Black Monday as “historic”? I ask the question in all honesty, because when I queried the form and nature of the apology (more of that later) with some friends of mine, one of the justifications I had in Joseph’s defence was that he did not owe anyone an apology in the first place. That is true, of course, because Joseph Muscat might carry some baggage around in his suitcase labelled “My Past”, but he must have been the same age as myself at the time of the happenings – and I was a very cute (or so they tell me) little kid aged four.

True, Joseph’s circumstances might have been a tad different to those I grew up in. Mine was the family constantly terrorised by acts of wanton violence occurring for almost a decade and that seemed to find no barriers from the governmental side of the day (rather, one strongly suspected some form of acquiescence). His was in all probability a jolly labourite upbringing and it might not have been too difficult for his family to deduce that such acts of violent abandon would never come their way since they almost inadvertently were committed on persons of a Nationalist persuasion.

Such was the fun and joy of our early years – young kids and children on my side of the divide grew up seeing terror, fear and uncertainty on our parents’ faces all the way when our school became another battleground. Other, more fortunate, kids could breeze through childhood with a Dairy Milk in their hand, dreaming of becoming a journalist at the service of their nation (and, who knows, with a bit of luck and karma you could become leader of the party).

So, yes, Joseph Muscat the person did not owe anyone an apology. Joseph Muscat the leader of the party in Opposition that has long been associated with some of these violent events, however, does. He knew it. He would not have defined it as an apology and he would not have framed it as “historic” had he not known it to be important. Cynics (or realists) would also add that he knew the value of this apology in PN-PL terms. If he got the apology right, then the numbers of the crowds that he so dearly loves (Inhobbkom) would be boosted by those who might have found it a tad bit difficult to cross the barrier until the PL repented.

The problem is that Joseph not only wants to make them want him. He also has to worry about the members of his umbrella movement who feel that there never was, and never should be, an apology. What followed, therefore, was the half-baked “This should never have happened”. It’s hard not to be cynical but, then again, our politicians ask for it. A person who has just had an uncontrollable bowel movement and soiled his pants says: “that should never have happened”. Someone aiming for a “historic apology” needs to throw in contrition, repentance and a strong dose of sincerity.

What Joseph aimed for was an apology. The impression we got is that, in his bid to please the hard-liners, he ended up giving us an apologia – in the Latin sense of the term: a defence of one’s own actions.

What have I got to do to make you care?

Which brings us to the reactions on the Nationalist Party side. First of all, it would be correct of me to say that former President Edward Fenech Adami is more than within his rights to say that the apology was far short of being satisfactory, as far as he is concerned. What the Fenech Adami family suffered on that day (and surely other days) cannot be brushed aside by a half-baked apology that has a clear whiff of political convenience. Insofar as apologies directed at Malta’s Leader of the Opposition, who had his name blanked out of official newscasts, I think that Labour would do well to come up with something better than “that should not have happened”.

There is, however, this not too minor issue of what is fast becoming the sanctimonious Nationalist. The events of the late seventies and eighties are there for all to see. They will not be forgotten easily and most of us will remain with the scars that are bound to be there for life. I am still confused by the hardcore Labourite who fails to understand how angry and emotional a person who did not associate himself with Labour in those troubled times can feel about the issue. In fact, I fail to understand how Labourites fail to understand. I fail to comprehend the “how long will you whinge about it?” kind of question.

But that is not my point. The Nationalist Party must be given its due for having been the party that fought hard in those dark times in order to return this country to a semblance of normality. As I have written elsewhere, we cannot but be grateful for the masses that performed a peaceful revolution in the face of violent adversity, and the Nationalist Party did have a huge part to play in that. There was a point in 1987 when a Nationalist government was, in fact, elected with the idea of a “new politics”. It was to be a government for all the people and chief among the buzzwords was “reconciliation”.

So my bafflement now moves on to the Nationalist divide of the crowd that, in this day and age, still prefers to act in favour of divisiveness. For if Joseph Muscat was not a hundred per cent convincing with his business of apology, what can we say of the PN’s readiness to label a party and its people a good 30 years after the events? Were we not supposed to be the generation that lived better times?

Political expediency was not only a decisive factor on the Labour side of the two plagued houses. It was also there to be seen from the readiness with which the PN and its spin masters shot down any sign of possible repentance and apology (no matter how weak). There for all to see was the true picture of our Sorry State. It did not stop there – those who were prepared to take up the (not so pristine) olive branch offered by Labour were quickly branded as donkeys.

It’s a sad, sad situation

So there we had it. What would appear, on the face of it (and to the diehards), to be an apology and a rejection turned out to be a debate between a hypocrite and a zealot. There is no denying that the sad period of our history when the flag of democracy was in tatters merits remembrance, and the folks at The Times were doing the right thing, commemorating the 30th anniversary of that dark day. Sadder still, there is no denying that our political representatives have no qualms about turning such an important stepping stone in the maturity of our young democracy into another futile and irritating political football.

In truth, Labour’s slow path to maturity might already mean that any apology to all those who suffered in those times risks being one that is 30 years too late. If they are not careful in embracing the apology and offering a fresh start, the Nationalists, too, will have a good reason to apologise before too long. That is a sorry truth of our nation.

And it’s getting more and more absurd

Of course, once the big boys were playing the apology game, others had to enter the fray. The MUT was one of those organisations playing the ‘apology game’, demanding one from the Education Ministry. In any other week, this news might have slipped our attention, but this week it was evident that apologies were the ‘in’ thing. Everyone under the sun had his or her definition of what is an apology – not without their own biases.

In the end, what we end up with is a tangible feeling of falsity. The false pretences and the zealous hypocrisy only serve to fan the flames of the bonfire of distaste that is generally felt towards the workings of the two parties. The PL flock might still believe in the progressive message of their latest messiah, the PN herd have long retreated to the fortress of history to defend their side of the battlefield; it leaves us with the disillusioned rest who can only but hold up their middle finger in the general direction of both parties.

Don’t hold your breath for an apology.

Jacques was busy defining apologias on http://www.akkuza.com. You’d be sorry to miss what was going on in the blog next week.