When I lived abroad and frequently trawled eBay for Malta-related memorabilia, nothing was more irritating than when I came upon items put up for sale by someone who signed by that infuriating name of ‘Sunny Malta’.
I could not understand how anyone would be so myopic as to think that the sun only shines on this island.
Moreover, I could not accept that someone would describe my country, of which I am reservedly proud, as being simply a sun-drenched rock where to go to get a tan and in the process get fleeced every step of the way by a people who just won’t shed their pirate mentality.
No sir, this was not my Malta. Or is it?
Last week, a magistrate acquitted two Swedish women of disturbing the peace and of God knows what else the police concocted in their charge sheet. The two women were strip searched and effectively humiliated because a flag they had been waving after a World Cup match brushed against one of our illustrious police officers. The Swedes didn’t take the police bullying lying down. They fought their case and won. The incident dated back to June 18, which means these two women have gone through hell for more than two weeks. What fond memories they shall carry in their hearts of our Sunny Malta, now that they got their passports back.
Our Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia has called an internal inquiry. Given his track record so far, Mallia should consider setting up a permanent investigative committee to monitor anything that comes under his remit. It has been a mess ever since this former criminal lawyer turned politician was given this sensitive post.
Given the numerous and useless government appointments we’ve had to witness ever since Labour came to power, a quango of a permanent investigative committee of anything Mallia has his fingers in may actually be taxpayer money well spent.
It would certainly beat a government-paid real estate job consisting of looking for garages for local bands with no future, or a security job at national events organised for no apparent reason other than to feed the ego of an artistic community frustrated by the reality of living on an island fondly called Sunny Malta but which offers them little realistic career prospects.
That the Swedes’ defence lawyer happened to be Giannella de Marco, Mallia’s former business partner, only adds poignancy to this scandalous case that puts the country to shame. Strange how justice, too, is best served cold.
And in the midst of all of this, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was busy at a business breakfast last week saying his passport sale scheme was so successful in attracting ‘high net worth individuals’ that the passport buyers actually wanted to have a genuine link with the country: you know, over and above paying the purchase fees for an EU passport and pretending to live here. The reason, according to Muscat, is that they’re “falling in love with the country”.
Now Muscat has a strange track record with the use of the word ‘love’. He first applied it when he was elected Labour Party leader in 2008. He told his adoring crowd: “I love you and let us love each other.” It sounded like he was about to turn the party in a hippy love-fest, but he didn’t. It became a gay love-fest instead.
More recently, in one of his less profound moments, Muscat declared that it wasn’t law that made a marriage, but love.
In one clean sweep he wiped away one of the fundamental institutions of our society and replaced it by an infantile and shallow definition that even a teenager going through puppy love could see through.
And now it turns out that investors are coming to Malta because they’re falling in love with the island. It sounds like Sunny Malta all over again, straight out of a 1960s tourist brochure targeting British ex-servicemen and their wives. Muscat has no idea what he is talking about. It’s like he’s never ventured outside Burmarrad.
Muscat wants to turn Malta into another Dubai with its iconic buildings and extensive shopping arcades. Anyone wanting that would simply go to Dubai
Yes, people do come to Malta and fall in love with the place. Many others don’t and some are repulsed. There is nothing at first glance that would ever entice you to want to come and live here.
It is chaotic, loud and overcrowded, manners are lacking, the roads are a mess, the driving a nightmare, and while we do manage to keep some flowers alive on our centre strips, our countryside is a disgrace and will soon turn into a building site.
And yet they fall in love with it all the same, just like my better half, because they see that beyond the chaos, the selfishness, the cheating and the greediness, there is a kinder, welcoming Malta that’s fascinating in its eccentricities and fanaticisms. Here life is a little slower than on the continent, rules are always negotiable and there are some very genuine and generous people.
Most importantly, there is a conservative base that, for all its faults and hypocrisy, manages to uphold good and honest values thanks to the country’s Christian heritage and generally sound families. And that makes Malta a country to fall in love with.
Muscat can never understand that. He thinks he can make Malta attractive by making it glitzy through grandiose projects and high-rise buildings that would destroy the very characteristics that make visitors fall in love with the island. He wants to turn Malta into another Dubai with its iconic buildings and extensive shopping arcades. Anyone wanting that would simply go to Dubai.
And most of all, Muscat thinks he can do all this with packaging, the same way he repackaged the Labour Party and metamorphosed it in a power hungry machine backed by big business who can recognise a fast buck when they see it.
He said that much at the business breakfast when he spoke of an inter-government effort to coordinate work done by government entities in order to deliver a coherent message about Malta. The planning authority said very much the same thing when it announced its high-rise policy. The goal, it said, was to “encourage development which reflects a more prestigious corporate image for the Maltese islands”.
Mallia’s Home Affairs Ministry spoke on similar lines too when it pulled the promotion video produced by the police, saying it was amateurish and bad for the country’s image. Well, any damage done to Malta by that video pales when compared to the shame two officers brought upon the corps. Another inquiry will never erase that.
A corporate image for the country is fine but the beauty of Sunny Malta lies in its details. We need to refine, not reinvent, our product that is Malta and this can only be achieved through education, discipline and the promotion of civic sense and civic pride that is so lacking.
Infantile pipedreams, a rehashed Switzerland in the Mediterranean myth by a prime minister obsessed with his place in history, can have long-lasting repercussions on this little country, most especially on its tattered environment.
This European country does not need some pseudo-revolution because the sun did not rise in March 2013, as Muscat would have us believe. Muscat does not think far ahead and plans to shortcut his way to his grandiose Dubai plan by turning this country into a vassal state of communist China.
That is what he will effectively be doing when he signs off Malta to a dictatorial State in a “groundbreaking” memorandum.
Muscat told the business breakfast that each time he meets Chinese decision-makers (whoever he means) they always say how fascinated they are with the Maltese. Thankfully, Muscat spared us a transcontinental love affair here, but he did point to Malta’s traditional bond of friendship with China. He was of course referring to the legacy of Mintoff, who got us the Red China Dock that we conveniently call Dock 6, although China is still as red as ever.
Mintoff is gone but his successor is not and his plans are as erratic as his predecessor’s. China’s rising sun will throw a long shadow on this Sunny Malta.