We live in each other's pockets

We know everything about everyone. We are rated as the most crammed place in Europe; 1,274 people per square kilometre. The next placed is the UK with a mere 395!

It is small wonder that we get on each other's nerves and that to survive we have to learn to be tolerant and not let the Sirocco get the better of us. We are no strangers to road rage or crime passionelle. We are the eighth most densely-populated country in the world.

In the past the excess population overspilled to the "colonies" wherein, by and large, huge enclaves of us still exist in a time warp celebrating festas and eating pastizzi as if wafted by some mystic genie from Qormi to Sydney or Sannat to Toronto!

We Maltese have survived for centuries by the skin of our teeth; scrimping and saving while other nations took what they wanted from us without putting very much back. We have always made the most of what we have and have made so much in the last half century that now saturation point has been reached and we need to have a serious rethink about where we should be heading in future. Prosperity has all but ruined us!

Malta is once again being assaulted by forces that are way beyond its control. We have the very real challenge of illegal immigration along with all its permutations and derivatives. This is a time when our 2,000-year-old Christian traditions are being put to the test. So far, our score has been mediocre.

The Church seems to have finally woken up to the fact that Europe is inexorably reaching a state of emergency as last week in Vienna the Council of European Episcopal Conferences focused on the African migration to Europe declaring that it has reached a stage where it has escalated to a point where people are being trafficked and abused. "The Church has felt the need to become more vocal and active on this issue while retaining its identity and mission to evangelise."

While the right-wingers "celebrated" the watery death of 70 immigrants a couple of weeks ago, the Pope declared that it was a terrible human tragedy. Only last year Prof. Friggieri and I were both taken to task for quoting the parable of the Good Samaritan. We were informed that Jesus had no intention of "burdening us with his charitable deeds".

I would say that this unequivocal stand by the Church is actually vastly overdue! Therefore, as the most densely-populated country in Europe, we do need help, physical, fiscal and moral; and fast.

Unless we can reach the organisational perfection of a beehive there is little hope that any Prime Minister, any government and any civil service can ever come to real grips with the malaise that causes Malta to malfunction so blatantly. Last week, I attended a round table (it was actually square) conference about the environment and sustainable development organised by the PN as a run-up to Independence Day.

As the discussion hotted up and the various issues were put forward; issues like the irreparable damage brought about by procrastination to review the 1939 rent laws, the global energy crisis, pollution in all its forms, animal welfare and, above all, the rampant and ruinous building frenzy, one realised what a Sisyphean job being a Prime Minister must be. When one thinks of those 1,274 people per square kilometre, all of whom have a vote and all of whom must be kept happy and contented, the task is formidable indeed.

I suggested, not for the first time, that empty properties should be taxed, particularly properties that are left semi-finished for speculative purposes or in a state of disrepair because of disputes. With one decisive stroke of a pen, the Prime Minister will solve both the deficit problem and the housing one, killing two ghoulish birds with one stone!

Go on Tonio, you are still in time to insert it in the budget. Tell them I told you so.

Attending this conference was an eye-opener and to me yet another confirmation that politicians must either be masochists at heart or that the advantages of being in harness must somehow be more than commensurate with the discomfort of being faced by a dozen Gordian Knots a day. I actually told the Prime Minister that I have many times compared him to Hercules with the exception that while the Greek hero only had Twelve Labours, Lawrence Gonzi has to battle with a constantly self-perpetuating Hydra as solving one problem creates three others instead.

Most of these problems are caused by over-proximity! Politicians tread in minefields of public opinion and are directed by vote-catching policies that are not always in the interest of the common good. The budget looms and despite all odds Tonio Fenech has stopped short of ruling out income tax cuts; so, not all is lost despite Alitalia going bust and Lehman going belly up.

Hope really does spring eternal.

kzt@onvol.net