Sunday, 13th July 2008
Megalomania in Msida
I have never met Vince Azzopardi - the president of the Għaqda Melita Banda San Ġużepp. For all I know, he might be the most even-tempered and nicest of men. However, his recent outburst and his mulish obstinacy about the closure of Regional Road for the letting off of fireworks during the Msida feast, has not endeared him to a good number of people.
Azzopardi's bluster was reported in last week's issue of this newspaper, which also carried the news that the Mater Dei superintendent had warned against closing the one and only major artery to hospital. Apparently this is an extremely touchy subject for the band club president who raged against what he sees as an unbearable imposition.
In the melodramatic fashion beloved of tyrants, he declared that the road would remain open over his dead body. He railed against those who objected to the inconvenience which would be caused, "You are denying us our right to the feast. Don't you dare come to Msida, I'm serious...If you don't like it, don't pass through Msida. We never needed you and we are never going to."
Where do I begin pointing out how wrong Azzopardi is? His statements are totally off the wall but sadly typical of people of his ilk - those who let their obsession cloud their judgment. To begin with, no one is depriving the festa-lovers of their big occasion. They can go ahead with the church services, the celebratory marches, lighting up the town with multi-coloured fairy lights, even the letting off of fireworks. In fact, they can indulge in the whole shebang that comes with the feast, with one exception - closing the one road that leads to the national hospital and the north of Malta.
There are many reasons which militate against the closure of Regional Road, but the main one is that it creates havoc and inconvenience for thousands of drivers trying to get to anywhere in the vicinity. I speak from experience, having been caught up in a massive jam of overheating cars for two hours during a previous edition of the feast. The thing I remember most about that ghastly episode is the smell of burning rubber brake pads as cars stopped and started for the nth time, and the realisation that an ambulance would have a very hard time getting through the bumper-to-bumper car jam to the last stretch of road to the hospital.
Such considerations do not carry much weight with the fireworks fanatics. They maintain that since Msida has to put up with an average of 90,000 cars a week, having roads closed for a couple of days was not asking too much.
Again, this is extremely dodgy reasoning.
Msida is not an autonomous state with residents who "tolerate" cars driving through its precincts.
It happens to be a town situated in a central area. That makes it one of many. I'd say Floriana and Hamrun have the same volume of traffic or more.
Prior to the relocation of the hospital, Pietà was inundated with cars driven by visitors to St Luke's - all spewing noxious fumes and taking up precious parking places. Sliema gets its fair share of traffic too.
So Msida has no claim to fame as the traffic capital of Malta.
And the people telling the rest of us what to put up with had better realise how irritating they are. I don't live in Msida and I've had to put up with the closure of a main road leading away from my home, cranes clogging up the capillary roads, hearses and funeral corteges blocking my street and the interminable festa season.
Whenever I complained to the police about ear-splitting petards being let off and the all-night street parties, they told me to be patient as this only happened once a year.
I gritted my teeth and told them that this happened once a year every Sunday in summer, so it was a constant nuisance.
They came back with the withering response that the festa celebrations were only held at weekends and that I should try and put up with what they termed a "holy tradition".
With that kind of attitude, I'm not surprised to read that the permit for the closure of Regional Road has been issued for the past 11 years.
I wonder whether things will change now that the country's main hospital is sited a couple of hundred metres away from the place where fireworks are let off.
At the time of writing there are still some people who are rallying round Vince 'don't-you-dare-come-to-Msida' Azzopardi.
They don't seem to realise how utterly absurd it is to allow a relatively small group of fireworks afficionados to domineer a large stretch of public road with the maximum level of inconvenience to the greatest number of people, just because that's what they've always done, or because it only happens once a year.
But then, it's not the first time that so-called "tradition" (even an 11-year-old one) trumped common sense and civility. It probably won't be the last.
In the meantime, we can console ourselves by considering the ludicrous aspect of the situation - one where a band club president achieves national visibility as the man who declares that Msida is an independent and autonomous entity and warns the rest of us to keep out.
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