You are known to be heavily addicted to both print and the sea. So three publications in a series called Telos (Greek, we are told, for Finality), with a leaping dolphin outlined on its white cover, is unlikely to have escaped your notice. What do you make of them?
There is more to talk about in the third issue alone than I have space for. It is edited by David Raphael Busuttil, executive director of the Fondation de Malte. He tells us that this number focuses upon 1989, an undoubted watershed in world history.
But the reason for the choice of topic is not primarily historical. It is rather that in 2010 it seems as if we have managed to work ourselves back into a situation in which we face a repetition of the same structural choice that we did in 1989.
However, this time round we should have learnt from the catastrophic consequences that followed 20 years later from the choice act-ually made in that fateful year 1989. The fall of the Berlin Wall, which occurred that year, has become the mother of symbols denoting communication instead of division. Perhaps for no longer than the duration of that year a luminous hope was entertained.
A creative synthesis between the political Right and the political Left seemed possible. The political Right believed in the free market economy. The political Left was committed to a State-governed development process based on multilateral dialogue leading to binding legal instruments.
The hope now was that a universal convergence could be reached whereby the whole world would become a market economy tempered, however, by ethical and common good-inspired regulation by the appropriate authorities.
Instead, a total dismantling of the development agenda ensued. The Third World became a spent force. Agencies like the IMF and the World Bank imposed pure free-market doctrine on all the poor communities of the world, although their need for development was heavy investment in building infrastructures that the free market would never provide.
The result 20 years later was the gravest ever financial crisis and economic downturn.
Between 2007 and 2009, the number of unemployed rose by 30 million, while some 200 million people, mostly in developing countries were pushed into poverty.
Awni Benham, assistant general secretary of the United Nations and chairman of the International Ocean Institute at the University of Malta, in his article in Telos remarks on the paradoxality of the IMF and the World Bank being given the task of remedying matters: "It is tantamount to putting the arsonist in charge of the fire brigade."
How relevant is all this to Maltese politics?
On one hand, Joseph Muscat is striving to present himself as the leader no longer of a Left party, but rather of a movement that embodies the local equivalent of the creative synthesis between Left and Right that is described in Telos as having been the flash of hope that glimmered in the hearts and minds of all moderates and progressives throughout the world in that meteoric year 1989.
The trouble with this plan is that it is still being thought in terms of a struggle between two parties. Instead, it would seem more logical to propose a different constitution for a political system in which many important issues need to be approached in non-party ways.
This necessity is greatest in those areas where the choice is essentially what stance is to be taken up at the European level. The MEPs of both parties seem to be providing on the whole an excellent example that deserves to be followed by our country as a whole.
On the other hand, Lawrence Gonzi is suffering from a dimming of his charismatic image. It is tempting to think that this partial eclipse is due to his not having dealt with the Malta Environment and Planning Authority in the obvious radical way - like abolishing the bureaucratic case officer structure and making architects themselves responsible for observing the set guidelines, subject to authoritative monitoring.
But could this not be a symptom of non-adoption of the 1989 flash of hope? There is a reluctance to re-grow things from fresh roots. Thus, there is clear recognition that Malta's future depends on finding a fitting niche in the global digital economy. But we keep getting enmeshed in the old-style Capitalist folds of Microsoft. What about the electoral promise to make Malta a Centre for Open Source Systems in line with our proposition of the Common Heritage of Mankind and the great 1989 flash of hope?
The kind of analysis and reflections upon 1989 in the light of 2010 found in Telos 3 strikes me as bringing to light the sort of political vision that committed citizens of Malta-in-Europe like me are expecting from our leaders.
Are there any particular points that you think deserve highlighting besides the general point that you have been making?
There are many. For instance, J.P. Massué writes about scientific and technical co-operation between western and eastern Europe before and after 1989. He argues that Europe in the current planetary context appears sadly ageing and lacking dynamism.
The remedy he sees is growing two wings in the form of new forms of enlargement in relation to the Mediterranean on one side and to Russia and the Caucasian states on the other. More specifically he proposes that the project of a European technological insti-tute launched by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso should include programmes for training in entrepreneurship among the eastern neighbours of the European Union.
Presumably these would resemble the course just ended last Wednesday at the University of Malta organised by the Fondazzjoni Temi Zammit called Evita (Exchange, Valorisation and Transfer of regional best policy measure for SME support on IT and E-business Adoption).
The chosen platform was an Open-source system: Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment).
Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Margaret Zammit.