A funny thing happened at the planning authority last week: they refused a permit. The Grand Harbour Regeneration Corporation, headed by former Labour president Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, wanted to put up a so-called monument right opposite Renzo Piano’s new parliament building in Valletta. The bronze sculpture consisted of our local version of the Three Musketeers with D’Artagnan thrown in to bring the motley crew to four. Gozitan artist John Grima said his work was not a monument but a work of art.
Art is subjective and some art is more apparent than others, like Piano’s monumental art piece. The Mepa board (not including Labour’s representative Joe Sammut, who voted in favour) rightfully kicked out the proposal.
One Mepa board member, Timothy Gambin, made a curious observation when an architect said the knights of St John had defended the city. Gambin, an archaeologist appointed to the Mepa board a few weeks after Labour came to office, on meritocracy, no doubt, said he did not believe the knights deserved such a monument because they surrendered to Napoleon in 1798 and never defended the city.
It would be better, he opined, to have a monument to the anti-aircraft gun crews who defended the city in the last war. Is this what passes for land-use policy nowadays?
Mepa is truly in cloud cuckoo land, getting lost in a useless debate on an equally useless sculpture at City Gate while ignoring the fact that, a few metres down the road, the government it serves so well is relocating the monti to fulfil a backroom electoral pledge in return for votes.
Valletta is being denigrated, its paved streets being taken over by cars and hawkers and this without a whimper from a Mepa too busy planning to legalise development it should have stopped from taking place in the first place.
Board member Gambin’s comments on the anti-aircraft crew were also politically incorrect in Labour’s redefinition of Maltese history, at least until a short time ago.
In Dom Mintoff’s golden years, it was generally acknowledged that the last war was not ours to fight but the foreigners’.
German Stukas and Italian bombers brought ruin to Valletta and the cities across the harbour because the British were here. Those brave Maltese soldiers manning the anti-aircraft posts, which Gambin wants to honour, died for nothing. That is why, Labour mythology goes on to teach us, the great salvatur Mintoff turned this island into a neutral State, so it would never again fight someone else’s war.
Now a very serious threat is coming from our southern neighbour Libya, a country which fell into chaos when its despotic ruler and Mintoff buddy Muammar Gaddafi was finally eradicated. It would have been a less bloody affair had neutral Malta back in the 1980s not warned Gaddafi of an impending US air strike that could have taken him out. But, alas, Labour’s neutral Malta was always anti-Western and anti-US, especially.
Which is why our Foreign Ministry, last September, was so quick to deny that Malta had joined an anti-ISIS coalition led by the US, after the State Department listed Malta among 62 countries in the coalition.
In an immensely contradictory statement, the Foreign Ministry had said that Malta offered its “moral and political” support in the fight against barbarism and terrorism and that, since Malta’s neutrality was aimed at achieving peace, in these circumstances it “cannot be neutral or passive”.
Under Labour, Malta has moved from ‘fighting someone else’s war’ to telling other countries to fight a war for us
At that time, Foreign Minister George Vella was also candidly expressing his concern at the possibility that the Islamic State may infiltrate Libya, something that has effectively happened.
Malta, Vella added ominously, needed to revise its military defence provisions because neutrality was no guarantee that Malta would remain untouched. Another certificate to Mintoff’s foresight, no doubt.
The Nationalist Party has taken Labour to task for being the only EU country not to join the US-led coalition. It should go further and say that Malta’s neutrality is a fake concept Mintoff shoved down our throats through a constitutional change in 1987 in return for electoral changes, without which Labour would have remained in power.
Neutrality was Mintoff’s sick way of conducting foreign relations, by trying to play one country or bloc against another. The end result was political isolation.
The PN is now accusing Joseph Muscat that his actions in the fight against terrorism did not match his words. It could have been Muscat’s habitual knee-jerk way of governing, or, maybe, there is something only he knows, but this weekend Muscat came out supporting a possible Italian military intervention in Libya, under UN auspices. He is offering logistical support, but not boots on the ground.
Muscat is ready to take Malta to war.
Childishly, he had to tweet this very serious foreign policy change, one that supports the idea that a country to the north of us, Italy, should attack a country just south of us, Libya.
A more cautious and responsible Opposition leader has urged the government not to rush, to get the whole of the EU involved in the Libya crisis and not just a handful of countries.
Never since independence has Malta been exposed to such a serious foreign threat. Why did we deserve such a bad fate to have Muscat at the helm?
In his 19-word tweet, with a grammar mistake thrown in for that delightful, extra Labour touch we could always do without, Muscat aligned neutral Malta with Italy against ISIS.
That Muscat supports military intervention in Libya was no surpise. When he met British Prime Minister David Cameron he had likewise urged his British counterpart to bomb our southern neighbour. He probably said much the same thing to the German Chancellor but we do not really know what Muscat went to Germany for. All that we know is that, a few days before meeting Angela Merkel, he spoke against the EU austerity policies, something very close to Merkel’s heart. An old Mintoffian bargaining tactic, no doubt. Labour never changes.
Malta was here before a few years ago under the much safer pair of hands of Lawrence Gonzi. This time round, the enemy in Libya is much less predictable and far more dangerous. This time round, the enemy is Islamic fundamentalism and instead of Gonzi we have Muscat. Makes you feel so safe, doesn’t it?
Under Muscat, neutral Labour Malta has just moved from fighting someone else’s war to telling other countries to fight a war for us. If Germany and Italy, which once bombed us, do not step up to the plate at this moment of need, there’s always the likes of Gambin on the Mepa board to put paid to that. He’s not one to forget easily.
As for reports of threats of ISIS missiles being fired our way from Libya, those savage fundamentalists should know that they need not fire any missiles at all to destroy Malta. We’ve already got Mepa.
Once, this very necessary organisation was described as fundamentalist over its insistence to enforce land use and environmental policies in a country accustomed to chaos. Then came Labour and Mepa was successfully muzzled with a new kind of fundamentalism called populism.
Labour is doing a fine job ruining this country without ISIS’s help, and it’s starting with Valletta.
De Valette burgers or China-made g-strings, anyone?