Most days of the week I would find it hard to imagine what it would be like for me to be a woman. Tony Mifsud writing in The Sunday Times drove me to make the attempt. More than that he drove me to imagine what it would be like to be a woman considering abortion.
It must be said, with the greatest humilty of course, but no feat of my imagination could allow me to picture the female version of me making ship-to-shore phone calls to procure an abortion in international waters in Dr Gomperts ship patrolling off the Maltese coast to keep Tony Mifsud awake nights.
How could he think anything like that out loud? Write in beside the leading article in the Sunday Times? He very well knows that abortion is far more easily available to Maltese women in Sicily and in the UK combined with the privacy required to preserve appearances and our precious double standard. Who wanting an abortion would be so indiscrete as to give Dr Gomperts such a triumph and the Tony Mifsuds the resulting hue and cry? Unbelievable.
Raphael Vassallo’s crie de coeur in Malta Today for the establishment of a liberal lobby in Malta stands back to back with Tony Mifsud. And jolly good for him. Raphael made the clarion call and I hope that many will flock to his banner. Well a few at least.
The battle is joined but not on abortion. The issue is whether or not any Maltese citizen is free to hold opinions not made sacrosanct but the present political conjuncture. In fact anyone may spout anything but at the risk of being demonised by a provincial culture aided and abetted by blackmailed political parties.
Which brings me to the soul-searching political debate within the Greens of England and Wales on whether or not to appoint a party leader. There are political parties which are not into practical politics. Both sides of the debate have respectable arguments.
But politics is not theory alone. This is not an ideal world the rules of the game are not set by those with the highest democratic credentials nor do the people who vote have the time to analyse and weigh arguments to any significant depth. Politicians are shallow and politics is a virtual world because people do not have time for anything else. The politicians are simply meeting what little demand there is.
A party without a leader simply does not have a face. It has been possible for the GPE&W to carry on without one because they have not been a practical proposition in their mad first past the post electoral system and it may be a moot point whether appointing a leader will change much unless their country achieves a better level of democracy. For Greens in jurisdictions where they can achieve decisionmaking positions the risks to sainthood involved in playing the game are simply necessary.
Lobby groups without political savvy may be great fun but may be a great big useless merry-go-round if they do not have a target and the means to hit it. Our homegrown anti-abortionists have created their campaign out of nothing and made such a storm so early on that interest has now faded. Their focus on constitutional change has become a little suspect when there is so much to do in practical terms in protecting mothers, their unborn children and their offspring from the effects of pollution and sheer ignorance. Would it not make much better sense to have a wall-to-wall campaign to prevent spina bifida than to make such a hoo haa about constitutional change which will not prevent a single abortion?
Theoretical liberals are not much better. How, in the context of Maltese politics, will it help to theorise, flatter or condemn? Can either the blues or the reds be made to suffer from any pressure brought to bear by a liberal lobby? Only the Greens for not being as liberal as the lobby would like them to be in the most ideal of worlds? Now that sounds very clever indeed.
Sometime soon an election will be held in Malta. In fact there will be thirteen separate elections. It would be a real and remarkable change if the Greens achieved representation in one or more of these elections. It is possible. It takes just 2,800 votes from the 23,000 available in each district to make it happen.
Imagine that there would be no scope for any lobby group to make the unnecessary attempt to jam up the constitution because it would be politely turned down. Imagine that liberals have someone to develop citizens’ rights far and away from the fantapoltical abortion issue. It is far easier for me than to imagine phoning Dr Gomperts.
Picture.
