Like his onomastic, the great Augustine of Hippo, Austin Gatt, Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications, has no qualms about doing what he believes is right. His reputation to see things through is second to none as is, however, his inability to discuss or compromise once he has got the bit between his teeth. I would have thought, a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about his stance on institutionalised highway robbery, I had said quite enough about the legitimisation of fleecing of foreigners and tourists by all the touts out to make a fast buck. Not a bit of it. Minister Gatt reiterated he is as constant as the northern star and would not be moved. He also decided to bunch all the objections and suggestions to his new baby Arriva into one file and label it as Dogmata, not his own strangely, but “other people’s”, which, of course, puzzled me no end.
Dogmata, like stigmata, are usually found in some theological treatise. A dogma of faith is indisputable. That is why they are called dogmas or, to be technically correct, dogmata. If anyone disputes a dogma of faith, say, the resurrection, then you are automatically considered to be schismatic if not heretical. One can dispute things like divorce, in fact, without being schismatic or heretical as this is not considered dogma (although to hear some people go on one would easily imagine it is more important than transubstantiation).
That Kenneth Zammit Tabona thinks the two-tiered bus fare business is dangerously ridiculous and impractical is not dogma and neither is that I very much doubt that Arriva buses will get me to Valletta from St Julians in half an hour or less, dogma either. Minister Gatt intends to eradicate what he calls my dogmata and the dogmata of whoever has voiced an opinion about his new scheme and prove that he, as if empowered with the divine right of kings, must be right even when he is wrong.
Once Minister Gatt not only wishes to dispute the dogmata of colleagues like Simon Busuttil but destroy them, what does that make him? A heretic? A schismatic? I wonder. Sometimes this minister gets his definitions in a twist like when he told us artists to shut up because we live in a democratic country! As far as I know, it is precisely because we live in a democratic country that we artists were, and still are, in duty bound not to shut up about the Renzo Piano plan for the opera house site if we think it needs renegotiation.
Minister Gatt never once engaged in face-to-face discussion with any of us about the subject fearing that, should he do so, his ill-advised non-theatre plans would go the way of the St John’s Co-Cathedral bunker. When on Bondìplus I asked Bernard Plattner from Prof. Piano’s office whether it was possible to have a concert hall on the lines of Prof. Piano’s own Sala della Musica in Parma, he, Mr Plattner, immediately said “Yes, but nobody asked us!” by which one can understand there was and believe still is no specific brief for the site’s function at a juncture where our orchestra has been homeless for no less than 16 years!
Where Minister Gatt is concerned there never is any question of turning back. Unlike Pope Benedict, the Bishop of Gozo and the Pro and Judicial Vicars he shoots his mouth off and never afterwards resorts to lengthy obfuscating explanations of what he really meant. This steadfastness is something I could almost grudgingly admire were it not sheer obstinacy most of the time.
We had of late the so-called U-turn about condom use made by the Pope, which was much quoted in the international press whose knowledge about the inner workings and machinations of Church politics is pitifully naïve. There was no U -turn as only male prostitutes have been given the go-ahead to use them! Everyone else must still practice abstinence. Now you know and I know that, unless he is suicidal, any sane and self-respecting male prostitute must perforce use a condom and that his profession alone is in diametric opposition to everything the Church stands for as I doubt whether they are altar boys during the day and prostitutes by night, are they? Therefore, while it is no skin off the Pope’s nose to declare it is ok for male prostitutes to use a condom, it makes no difference at all to anybody else including the male prostitutes themselves proving how irrelevant the comment was in the first place! But I digress.
Common sense is truly uncommon. Both Minister Gatt and the Pope will not budge on matters that are obvious. Both are absolutist and will not countenance criticism. One, at least, is backed by the common though erroneous belief that his position as head of the Catholic Church gives total infallibility to his pronouncements. About Minister Gatt’s claim to dogmatic infallibility I am not too sure. Maybe, in another life, he was that little boy whom St Augustine met on the beach in Hippo Regis digging a hole in the sand and filling it with seawater claiming he wanted to empty out the sea into it? Who knows? Nothing surprises me anymore.
kzt@onvol.net