Powerful lobbies and laissez-faire attitudes

While we squa-bble over which five people on the island are best qualified to while away the time in Ye Olde Talking Shoppe, certain things are happening in our backyard which probably deserve a little more attention.

Take Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq. Lesser than Brussels, and greater. In the sense that, come summer, I know which question will be the more pressing, access to the sea or roaming charges. Last October, the country was kept entertained by 'video updates' of government bulldozers clearing the shanty on the seafront. Great. Now, it seems, the squatters are set to move back in, all laundered and 'regulated'. Fantastic.

I've little to say about the dreadful caravan cities along our coast. We've said it all before. They're ugly, they stink, their inhabitants bully people, they should go. Most of all, they are the embodiment, in brick and corrugated, of a laissez-faire attitude which basically lets powerful lobbies do as they please. This last is what I wish to talk about.

The thing with Malta is that there is little room for a law-abiding public. What few specimens of this rare species there might be end up sandwiched and helpless between two monsters. One being the powerful powerful, the other the powerful powerless.

There are two types of powerful powerful. The first is what we might call the traditional elite - old money, ecclesiastical inner circles, and a handful of families with gilded connections that may go back decades. The other is a motley tribe of newly rich (sometimes bizarrely so - there are now multi-millionaires in Malta) individuals, high-ranking but shadowy party apparatchiks, and such.

The mountain will very much go to this select group, who are in a position, for example, to acquire tracts of plum government land for peanuts, build whatever they like on it, and proceed to sell for stacks of cash. You will never see them queuing up for anything or arguing a point on television. In fact, you may never see them at all, for, rather like royalty, they believe that mystique is power's twin (it also tends to keep the taxman away). They also have enough money to buy private space, and can therefore make themselves invisible at will.

The powerful powerless are both commoner in number and more interesting. Their existence has been ascribed to many factors, including Mintoff and Mediterranean machismo, but the real answer is probably less colourful. They call themselves iż-żgħir (the weak), and without the slightest hint of irony at that. They are, in a sense, more insidious than their red-heeled cousins, not least since they're everywhere and quite unavoidable.

You will see their constructions, deceptively impermanent, on pretty much every stretch of public land on the island. You will hear their cars roar silencer-less through our streets. Do they bother with building permits, VRTs, and licences? The answer is no, and is usually served with a punch in the face and generous helpings of swearing. They can at times be 'imma orrajt ta' ('actually quite nice'), unless disturbed while daubing skulls and crossbones on rubble walls.

The two poles exist in a happy symbiosis. Iż-żgħir, for example, operate a number of ploys to keep doing as they please. First there are the threats, savage dogs, and ripped tyres - staple worries of those few who like to spend Sunday mornings walking in the countryside.

Second, there is what anthropologists have called the 'lop-sided friendship' of patronage. The powerless will seek to set up links with the powerful by various means (usually political), and the powerful will encourage this because they ultimately need a pasture of clients on which to graze. Think saints and devotees, in permanent need of one another. Election time is usually the best to observe these ungodly constellations.

The third trick is sympathy, i.e. calling oneself 'powerless' in order to get away with it. The caravan squatters are masters of this art: 'We're iż-żgħir, we have nowhere to spend the summer with our families, we're a tight-knit old-values community, we cannot afford summer houses, stop picking on us and get the big fish instead'. Balleċ, it works.

It is easy to figure where all this leaves those who cannot be bothered to make millions or to queue up, bleeding heart in hand, outside a patron's door. Nowhere really, and there's the rub. No one wants to be left stranded on the sterile patch known as 'law and order', which means most of us will at some point resort to some posturing along the two models. It's very much a case of follow the book and be screwed.

I am rather torn between hating and loving the ends of the sandwich. On one hand they have fun at everyone else's expense, and are therefore despicable. A year or so ago, a dear member of the soon-to-be-resuscitated 'Safari Camping Club' at Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq set his boxer on me simply because I dared walk across 'his' patch, and the sound of canines snapping inches away from my bottom wasn't funny.

At the same time, there is a certain charm to people who will simply not obey, who use every trick in the book to beat the system. I like to think that such attitudes make a mockery of, say, organised fascism or socialism, and are, as such, good. Orwellian scenarios are unlikely in Malta. Hope lies in the proles, though they may at times serve it hotter than Winston Smith ever bargained for.

mafalzon@hotmail.com