National emancipation

Politicians in Malta are regularly invited to places of worship to listen to solemn politico-religious opinion - if not enthusiastic finger-wagging advice - on how the Maltese politician and state should organise and practise their personal, social, national and international behaviour. The effect expected is thus quite optimistic.

This politico-religious pilgrimage to purely religious buildings may be of satisfaction and joy to some politicians but, as soon as it smells of obligation, it becomes a pebble - if not a rock - in the shoe of the politician and a chain around and inside his mind. If I were a politician and my party leader tried to drag me to look impressed at politico-religious dogma, there would definitely be discussion - if not screaming and kicking - due to the fact that I jealously cherish my secular independence. Yes, today it is possible to be a determined secularist; it is possible to be a normal European in the midst of generous, poking, fundamentalist paternalism.

Secularism sometimes comes under attack in this land of tug-of-war between inquisitorial confessionalism and socio-political freedom. Politicians are often told that there is a grave danger of dark, nebulous secularism in this holy land where the good and the moral are often dressed in fundamentalist straitjackets. In reality, proud secularism is the sign of intellectual socio-political emancipation for the individual, the politician and the state. In non-dogmatic verity, it is the fresh breeze that threatens obscurantism.

A Maltese speaker

When I recently met NSW speaker John Aquilina, I spontaneously spoke to him in English but it was a pleasant surprise to hear him reply in Maltese. The rest of the conversation was in Maltese - which he speaks perfectly well. Mr Aquilina has no problem understanding and enjoying play on words and other battuti in Maltese.

Mr Aquilina was six when he went to Australia with his parents. His spouse is not Maltese and both facts made me suppose that it was not easy for him to keep in touch with the Maltese language.

I must have been prejudiced by the fact that some Maltese go to London for a week and completely forget their language - with the adoption of a nauseating Anglo-Maltese. There is no doubt that this is the result of a cultural inferiority complex - which also dominates all that they do in their lives.

Mr Aquilina's example is a typical case of cultural emancipation and pride - which he carries with him wherever he travels.

Wrestling with words

Luckily we have no hurricanes in Malta except for those organised collectively in privates on the morrow of bang-bangs also called feasts. Somebody will surely write to point out that s/he remembers quite well that we have indeed had hurricanes in Malta during Neanderthal times and that some flower pots were overturned from window-sills preventing young ladies from being booked for a wedding, some faldettas raised over the head (and their wearers promptly arrested by the morality militia called Gift of Wrap for doing it on purpose to seduce and provoke) and some TV aerials mangled.

Why is it a good thing that we have hardly any hurricanes in Malta? There is only one reason. We would have to hear some people speak of "urugan" in the media all the time instead of "uragan". Why don't I like "urugan"? It reminds me too much of Ubu Roi and absurdist tradition.

Worse than this is the way Maltese adolescents are treated today - even officially. A press release, no doubt originating in the pen of the PRO of an education structure, speaks of "adoloxxenti" instead of "adolexxenti". Adoloxxenti seems quite clumsy to me - if not downright vulgar. The fact that it was written in an educational document is even more ironic.

Hospital car park

I agree with the suggestion in Żminijietna that the hospital car park should be nationalised. A few nationalisations within the urge for privatisation would not do any harm. This would be a simple case of improving the citizens' business for their own benefit. There seems to be some confusion in the debate between right- and left-of-centre. Some conservatives I know are against streaming - and so am I. But this is typical social democratic resistance. Some left-of-centre persons believe in mixed private-public enterprise even when a public structure is doing well. I guess that tradition has a habit of weaving itself into ideology and making it less recognisable.

A stumbling block

I consider it quite arrogant for European institutions to state that Malta's insistence on burden sharing in the illegal immigration problem is a stumbling block. If it had been another country, it would be called rationality and determination.

Dr Licari teaches psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and geolinguistics at the Department of French of the University of Malta.