What do you do when someone makes an extraordinarily dubious statement but with the air of speaking common sense? Two things, as a rule.

First, you look around to see if you’re the only one who thinks that what’s been said is peculiar. If everyone agrees with you, then you know that the onus is on the speaker to justify himself.

However, if you see that there are at least some people who greet that statement with acclaim, then something else is called for. You need to ask what is it about their world that makes that makes them treat what’s dubious as common sense.

This is what we’re going to have to do to understand what I found to be the most jaw-dropping of Joseph Muscat’s statements about the proposed American University of Malta.

There are several statements vying for the hot spot.

Muscat has claimed that the AUM would break the University of Malta’s monopoly in tertiary education. But that can’t be true. The UOM does not operate as a monopoly; it collaborates with several international universities in teaching as well as research. There already are branches of other universities operating in Malta, although in a limited list of subjects.

In any case, the UOM has 14 faculties and about 30 institutes and centres. Will the AUM break that ‘monopoly’ with its five undergraduate courses?

The UOM exercises this supposed monopoly over some 12,000 Maltese students. Will AUM break the monopoly by giving scholarships to 30?

It is also extraordinary in itself that this project is being hailed as having to do with education. For the foreign students coming over to study here, it might qualify as education (if AUM does not turn out to be a scam certificate dispenser). But from the perspective of Malta, the project has essentially to do with tourism.

Tourism is usually the context in which we discuss, for example, the students who come over to learn English as a second language. Tourism, in fact, is the way in which the project is being eyed by Marsascala’s shopkeepers and restaurateurs: as a substitute for the gap left by the closing of the Jerma Palace Hotel. The potential students and their parents have been discussed in terms of added bed nights.

However, it’s perfectly understandable why the project is still defined as ‘education’ by the government. That’s the criterion that might justify massive development on ODZ land. Tourism would not.

Education is a public good. So are pristine open spaces. It makes sense to say that you’d only be prepared to lose one public good if you’re gaining another.

It is extraordinary that this project is being hailed as having to do with education

But once the project is seen for what it is – a tourist project from a Maltese perspective – then we face the prospect of giving up a public good, belonging to all, to line the pockets of a few. That’s an unjust trade-off.

Even if it’s extraordinary to hail this investment as an education project, however, it’s understandable why some might think it is. It’s a university, after all.

Hence, the prize for the most extraordinary statement of all must go to another of Muscat’s reported statements.

When addressing his audience in Marsascala, he proclaimed: “If others gave you rubbish, we are giving you wealth.” And he was acclaimed.

Marsascala is the one place in Malta linking up my early childhood to my adulthood. It’s the constant amid several changes of address, a source of colourful family stories and personal memories of swimming dares, long winter walks and kites flown in long-lost fields.

Żonqor features prominently, not least because for five childhood years we lived there all year round.

I am also a ‘southerner’ born and bred. I’ve never lived anywhere else in Malta and would be hard pressed to do so. Only I don’t think of it as ‘the South’; I just think of it as the area that gave civilisation to the rest of Malta.

So, as you may have gathered, when someone says that he’s going to give wealth to Marsascala and the ‘South’, I sit up and listen. I love the place. In this case, however, wealth isn’t going to be given. It’s going to be taken away.

Land, which is a public good, is going to be given to a private investor to make private profits. Any access henceforth to the property will be with his permission.

The sports facilities that will be on offer to Marsascala’s aficionados will remain a matter of private discretion. A ‘favour’. Only public sports facilities count as a good belonging to all of us.

As for jobs – all 400 of them – around half will be for academic staff. Like them, the rest can hardly be reserved for ‘the south’ without breaking the law.

Any Maltese – indeed, any European – can apply and get them.

As for the expected multiplier effect on Marsascala’s businesses, that, too, will be wealth for private pockets. Where it will be spent – which shops in Malta or Europe or the world – is anyone’s guess.

I can understand Muscat when he says he’ll be giving us wealth. He can’t exactly say he’s nabbing it. But what is it that makes at least some people – apart from those who stand to profit directly – think that Muscat is speaking common sense?

To invoke stupidity would be too simple. It takes only two broad beliefs to make what Muscat is saying sound rational.

The first thing that we need to do is to think that there are no such things as public goods – property that we own in common, that should be kept out of the market; shared concerns, like the natural environment, that cannot be reduced to a monetary price or to a commodity.

The second is to think that, fundamentally, we are not citizens but, rather, consumers. That is, our freedoms are defined by our ability to shop, not by the rather wider, richer range of rights, which truly emancipate us. In this perspective, political rights – like the vote – are merely counters to be traded in for a fuller purse and better shopping facilities.

Once these two beliefs are factored in, you can see how people can applaud the AUM deal. They never thought of the land as belonging to them; they’ll applaud being given limited access to it and would even consider it a favour.

They don’t think there is such a thing as public civic interest but only a sum of private consumer interests.

If they can get even a fragment of the latter, where’s the loss?

The tragedy lies here. Democracy – authentic democracy – depends on institutions like public goods and rich notions of citizenship. Without them, we are just a crowd hoping for the scraps and favours from the tables of the rich.

ranierfsadni@europe.com