Wimpish Diplomacy

In his regular column on the Malta Independent on Sunday, Charles Flores exposes one of the Government's weakest spots - its submissive attitude towards Europe. He calls it Wimpish Diplomacy:

Caught as we are, at least the majority of us, between a genuine concern for the plight of the hundreds of illegal immigrants trying to gain a foothold to build a new future in Europe, and the embarrassingly huge economic and logistical problem they have created here, the least we can afford is a government that takes a wimpish attitude with those who should already have provided us with the funds and the expertise to tackle the crisis...

We have overnight become the wimps of Europe. Yes, we are the smallest and the poorest by anyone’s standards, but it is the attitude of our elected representatives that unnerves even those who had genuinely and steadfastly believed that EU access would be the key to solving all our troubles and tribulations. Here we have the first real crisis since 1 May of last year, and instead of growling and biting into the rich texture of European muscle, the Maltese government remains with its head bowed and its tail limp in a state of utter submission.

I emphasise the role of government because the Maltese, as a politically conscious nation, have never been wimps. On the contrary, examples of Maltese one-upmanship in the annals of imperial and European history, even going back to the times preceding the Knights, are manifold and often recorded in official accounts of the period as well as in individual works such as Jan Morris’ Pax Brittanica trilogy and David Niven’s biographies. The Maltese have always been a politically astute race with a natural tendency for hard, sometimes garrulous bargaining...