Once A Jesuit, Always A Jesuit: Mario Friggieri

The Minister for Justice and Home Affairs presented the new Commissioner for Refugees, Mario Friggieri, to the press. But Tonio Borg didn’t let him speak. Instead, he spoke about him while the commissioner stood silent, like an overbearing father speaking over the head of his nine-year-old son. A photograph in one of the newspapers speaks volumes: the minister looming in the foreground, talking down to journalists with his hand raised, while the commissioner stands to the side in calm resignation, shoulders down, hands clasped and eyes fixed on the middle distance.

When a journalist asked Mr Friggieri whether he agrees with the government’s policy of detention, he had time only to smile before the minister butted in with: “It is not within the commissioner’s remit to answer a question like that. Detention is not a policy; it’s the law.” The trouble with some lawyers, including those in government, is that they continually behave as though they are in a courtroom (“You don’t have to answer that”; “Objection!”). It’s one of the main reasons for all the legalistic quibbling about whether Jesmond Mugliett did or didn’t do the wrong thing. The point appears to escape them that what he did was not against the law, but it was highly unethical, and so unacceptable to the more sophisticated electorate of today. The trouble with some lawyers, and politician-lawyers are not exempt, is that they can think only in terms of “against the law/not against the law” and “against the rules/not against the rules”. Well, let me draw a simple analogy. Adultery is no longer against the law (it once was), but this does not mean that it is right, in that grey area called “not wrong”, or even acceptable. There is a general consensus, except among the practitioners of so-called open marriages – and even then you will usually find one partner, generally the wife, who is uncomfortable with it – that it is morally wrong. Even those who betray their spouses sexually are aware of the wrongness of it, and so seek reasons for justification. The point is that not everything that is morally wrong is against the law, but that does not make it acceptable.

So Mr Friggieri was paraded at his first press conference like a sort of silent parrot on Long John Silver Borg’s shoulder, and prevented from speaking in case he was naughty and said bad things. Apart from the sheer bad manners of Dr Borg’s gesture (never butt in when somebody else has been asked a question and is about to try to answer it), it spoke volumes about his personal attitudes. Father knows best. Don’t speak even when you are spoken to. I am the boss. How dare a journalist presume to ask that question, and how dare you try to answer it? Dr Borg was like a parent not allowing his child to speak when asked a question by another grown-up, so that the other grown-up must insist, “Please, let him speak for himself.”

Mr Friggieri is a former Jesuit who worked hard at setting up the open centre at Hal Far. As a one-time priest, he knows a thing or two about the practice of humility, obedience and biting his tongue. He is most unlikely to let rip and tell the minister where to stuff his spectacles. As somebody who has worked for years with refugees and illegal immigrants, he knows exactly what he is up against. He appears to be the right choice for the post, and I can only wish him well. What a pity that he was not allowed to meet the press on his own, instead of in the role of bridesmaid to Tonio Borg. And what a pity that none of the journalists pricked the minister’s bombastic balloon by asking: “And does Mr Friggieri have a tongue?” Ministers never seem to pick the kind of people who will stand up to them and challenge their behaviour. What a short-sighted view that is, because the end result is what we are seeing now: people who believe that they definitely know best, and who disbelieve the evidence of what is staring up at them from the newspapers every day, and whispered behind them in the streets.



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