As the Renzo Piano project in Valletta slowly unleashes its grandeur, it becomes increasingly difficult to walk through City Gate each morning without a mite sense of sadness for the man who made this happen.

The avalanche of criticism, ridicule and accusations levelled at former premier Lawrence Gonzi over this project is still very vivid in our minds. That brigade of pompous critics, fresh out of their liberal closet and about to embrace the scam that calls itself Labour, made a good job out of demonising the man who is being proved right today. City Gate is beginning to look fabulous.

That horrible 1960s gate is gone and the ‘breach’ left in the bastions emits a magical, warm light in the afternoon sun as Valletta’s offices get shuttered up and a sea of clerical workers gushes out of the city.

The new parliament, dubbed a cheese grater by some, is looking increasingly stylish from behind the hoarding. It is after all the work of a famed prize-winning Italian architect, and it shows it.

As for the former opera house site, so many heartstrings were tugged by irrational appeals for its reconstruction. That few bother to go to the theatre, let alone an opera, was conveniently ignored.

The recent Eurobarometer survey shows Malta with the second-lowest level of cultural participation in Europe.

In old postcards, the Opera House looks as sweet and decorative as a wedding cake, but it was a useless building, a fact also conveniently ignored. Getting at Gonzi was all that mattered at the time.

A 1945 report drawn up by Austen St. B. Harrison and R. Pearce S. Hubbard for the government had said the building was marred with serious practical difficulties, the acoustics were “execrable”, the line of sight of many of the seats unsatisfactory, the number of seats, from the point of view of an impresario, insufficient, and the stage, with its wings and loft, too small.

Recognising, already then, that there were those who wished to see the Opera House rebuilt, they concluded: “Only a person unskilled in the practice of architecture could suppose it possible, without changing its form, satisfactorily to remedy so many serious defects in a building.”

In just 10 months, we have crossed the square from the Renzo Piano masterpiece to the social housing block, which Labour is promising to build more of through funds derived from selling EU passports

How prophetic those gentlemen were, for many an ‘unskilled’ person came out screaming foul when the City Gate plans were unveiled. But Gonzi was determined enough to forge ahead and Labour now cannot stop the project, though you cannot trust them not to try and spoil it.

Initially, Labour was toying with the idea of not moving parliament to the new building at all. Then there was talk of other uses for the ground floor and more recently we heard that the garden project under City Gate might have to go to save money.

We still do not know what Labour actually plans to do, other than relocating the monti hawkers to right alongside this Piano architectural landmark because of another of those pre-electoral promises Labour has become famous for.

Yet there is more to meet the eye as you stroll into the capital city today. For right across the square from the new parliament is a huge social housing block built by none other than Labour’s former leader Dom Mintoff, also known as il-Perit.

Soon, once the hoarding around the new parliament is removed, visitors to Valletta shall be regaled by the glaring contrast of a Nationalist legacy on the right, that does us proud, and a Labour scar on the left, that makes you cringe at the crass insensitivity.

As the new Labour government continues to unfold, there is a growing pattern emerging that we are living a tale of two contrasting cities that could hardly be more apart.

In a space of just 10 months, our cultural policy has been refocused to concentrate on three carnivals a year, possibly another pre-election promise.

In the space of just 10 months, Valletta’s regeneration targets have shifted radically and are now apparently aimed at creating a new Paceville.

In just 10 months, we have crossed the square from the Renzo Piano masterpiece to the social housing block, which Labour is promising to build more of through funds derived from selling EU passports.

The events at the European Parliament last week, the now relentless international hammering of the country’s reputation, are slowly taking us back to those helter-skelter years of Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici when each morning we woke up not knowing what to expect next.

Under their successor and prime minister Joseph Muscat we have come full circle, and he is now even citing that terrible Mintoffian slogan, “Malta first and foremost” with increasing frequency. Malta is being alienated from its closest allies and pulled away from its natural home in Europe, because our government’s much-vaunted economic plan has turned out to consist of one single item only – selling what is not ours, European passports.

In just 10 months, over a billion euros of EU funds negotiated by the Nationalist administration are being contrasted with a buccaneering scheme by a prime minister who thinks he’s clever because of a possible loophole in EU law.

How long he will be permitted to play the rogue is difficult to tell, but the consequences of this cannot be pleasant.

Labour’s overseas adventures, and misadventures, are again becoming a matter of concern. The fact that Labour failed to garner even a handful of socialist votes in the EP only shows how much it is operating in isolation, how myopic its foreign policy is, how dangerously close we are coming to re-enacting those Mintoff years which caused the country so much international shame.

Why the Maltese electorate had to do away with a safe pair of hands that was Gonzi to replace him by an immature, erratic prime minister too big for his boots, is something everyone must search for himself. Maybe the PN became boring, the internal rivalries were far too damaging, the image of the “evil clique” was credible, or maybe the party just looked too conservative compared to Muscat’s new liberal Labour. But the price we may pay for this misadventure could be high.

When Barack Obama first became president in the US on a wave of misguided optimism, clichés and liberal values, he too had replaced a conservative, George W. Bush.

But soon after Obama took office, there began to emerge this strange, sinking sensation that maybe Bush’s policies were not so wrong after all, that maybe he was not the demon the liberal media had painted him out to be, that maybe Guantanamo prison and the overseas military interventions were necessary after all, and that his economic policy was sound and had kept unemployment in check.

As Obama faltered, stumbled, U-turned and above all failed to get the economy going (he’s still struggling to do that today), some disgruntled US businessmen in Wyoming, Minnesota sponsored a billboard on the interstate which showed Bush waving and smiling over the words “Miss me yet?”

One wonders how many here would be willing to sponsor a similar billboard of Gonzi today, just to remind us of the city he left behind before bowing out, so honourably and yet so ingloriously.

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