Thyme's Up

Where j’accuse deals with the recent discussions on the appointment of John Dalli, with the anger of Joe Borg, with the EU gravy train and with the meaning of working for the EU.

Yesterday evening I was invited to a special ceremony celebrating our cabinet secretary’s 20 years of service at the Court of Justice of the European Union (get used to that name : it’s the new Lisbon Treaty version as of today).  Around a score or more employees of this venerable institution were being feted with commemorative medallions for having spent 20, 25, 30, 35 or two score (yes there was one) years working for the Curia Europea. It was a short and sweet ceremony involving the usual doses of champagne (Massard), wine (Latour) and as far as I was concerned ubersugared orange juice. It was nice to see a warm side of the institution as gave thanks for years of faithful service.

The recent appointment of the man formerly known as Johnny Cash as Malta’s brand new Commissioner and the abrasive brushing aside of former Commissioner Joe Borg has set the usual tongues rolling as to the “gravy train” and that plebeian sort of language spiked with envy, infused with communist hopeless egalitarianism and boiling over with an “I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-I’m-on-about je ne sais quoi”.

Speculation as to whether Dalli was kicked upstairs and whether Joe Borg was dumped like a used condom on campus was fair game I would say. That it would be peppered with the nauseating mantra of “European employees in it for the money” talk should have been avoidable but then again considering the education and source of most of the interlocutors it could not have been otherwise.

Anybody who has worked away at any of the institutions wil by now be used to the whole chat of “we put you there” to the “we pay taxes for you” kind of claptrap. I for one heard this kind of bullshit long before we even voted to be in or out. I distinctly remember course mates of mine (who later wiggled their way to the seats of administrative power in MLPN) first mocking me for opting for an EU Law postgrad then wondering loudly whether “friends of friends” meant that I would get my job at an EU gravy trough. They were oblivious to the blatant inconsistencies of their argument (and possibly ignorant of the fact that I never would, and never will, need friends of friends to get anywhere).

Like myself there are hundreds of others who are now earning an honest living with the EU institutions and do so thanks to having sat for examinations or interviews where they were judged on their merits and not on their networks. Of course there will always be political appointees – starting from the MEP’s elected by the people to the Commissioner selected by the government. In the case of the Commissioner one would hope that the government makes its choice on the basis of political and technical know-how and not simply to award another job for a high class boy or to exile an uncomfortable insider to Brussels.

Some people just do not get that though. To them even the appointment to a prestigious post such as EU Commissioner is all about the gravy train – at least when it pays the critics to think that way. Here’s Daphne kicking off the Joe Borg Damage Limitation Exercise. It’s a staple PN response by now – usa e getta (use and discard) with head on personality attack:

Someone should remind Joe Borg that he’s been at the EU trough for five years and that it looks – well, slightly grasping – to make such a fuss about being wrenched away from his salary. Funny how he didn’t mention the money in his interview, like that isn’t a major factor. It’s just so painful to watch.

It’s blatant, in-your-face cejca talk. It’s as though Gonzi has a queue of old guard members standing around waiting for their turn to suck at the EU’s bounteous nipple. Then again it might be a matter of class. You know how the PN machine has been going on about razza and radika and all:

The point is that there was NO MESSAGE to communicate. Joe Borg was appointed to serve a fixed term from 2004 to 2009. When that term is up, it’s up. He was the only one assuming anything and – worse – taking it for granted. Even if he thinks the prime minister was an inconsiderate ass for not telling him ahead of time, there is absolutely no justification for the gross ill manners and poor judgement of giving an interview like that. What can I say without sounding like a terrible snob? Breeding will out. The sense of entitlement these people have is horrendous. – Daphne again (who else?)

The point is that confirmation or otherwise is not about whose turn it is to suck at the EU nipple. It is about who best represents the Maltese governments’ interest. In that case Borg might have been entitled to have some hope in the fact that Commission President Barroso would have liked to have him reconfirmed. No harm in that (and no class faux pas either).

On the other hand PM Gonzi is fully entitled to use this appointment to “kick Dalli upstairs” and get the Qormi Confessor as far from his troublesome backbenchers as possible. When he does that – and how he does that is open to fair comment and says many things about the state of affairs at Triq Herbert Ganado. For the PN spin machine to change this to crude money grabbing arguments of the Brussels Gravy Train variety (normally the killing fields for Eurosceptics) is not just cheap but plain ignorant.

That the PN spin machine has no qualms about denigrating important appointments and the value of working for EU institutions beyond earning that extra cash and pay out says much about how far from the 1987 PN it has come. No wonder we might still have to peg our noses when it comes to voting the next government because this one’s thyme (sic) is up.

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Quotes from the blog Running Commentary are taken from comments to the post entitled “Maltese radicals – an oxymoron”

As for the gravyt train in popular perception do check out the Malta Today editorial cartoon here.