Editorial

Barring a minority of vandals, ruthless hunters and unconscionable developers, our people have realised we are well on the way towards making Malta not just a place to be avoided by tourists but one in which living will be unpleasant and unhealthy. They also know that there is a dauntingly long list of things to be put right before we can begin to be proud of our country.

Amazingly, even our capital city, once a paragon of elegance, has become a place having little of the dignity deserved by its station, with the most shameful of entrances of any European town or city, and pavements that have been strongly deplored by the city's young mayor.

In recent years, Valletta has become a mere extension of this country's tourist resorts. City Gate is a depressing area in which an untidy car park, shabby cafès and street vendors and artists (some of them unlicensed) and the ever-shocking ruins of the opera house combine to make visitors feel they are entering a third-rate provincial town.

Valletta's local council is right in lamenting about the poor financial support it is receiving from the central government but surely it is also to blame when it allows the City Gate area to present its shameful sights day after day.

Again, should the city's main street have been reduced to a zone dominated by buskers and artists of sorts and thronged in summer by tourists flaunting bare beer-bellies and wearing little more than swim-wear?

Visitors would respect us more if we started respecting ourselves by insisting on a decent minimum of apparel to be worn by them as well as by our own citizens.

The Malta Tourism Authority, backed by the police or wardens, should make it clear to visitors that there is a reasonable dress code for Valletta and our museums and churches can help by refusing admission to scantily-clad persons.

The local council should insist that the law applies to everyone, including Cabinet ministers and senior officials whose cars block traffic most of the day in places like Independence Square. Wardens rarely seem to notice these persistent contraventions.

The pavements about which the Valletta mayor has complained are being ruined not just by cars parking on them but also by a disturbingly increasing habit of some shopkeepers to extend exhibition of their wares to the pavement outside the shop or even to cars parked nearby. Perhaps the worst example of this is the daily exhibition of a greengrocer's wares on the steps, and against the façade, of one of our venerable churches. This is shabbiness taken to an extreme.

Even if all these matters were improved, Valletta would still labour under the disadvantage of having a highly unattractive entrance gate and area and neglected monuments of importance such as Fort St Elmo.

If the considerable funds needed for the City Gate project are lacking for the moment, surely something can be done about demolishing the sad ruins of the opera house and creating, however temporarily, a pleasant square on its site. This, together with the abolition of the North-African style souk at the Gate, would be a good first step towards the recovery of the city's self-respect.