A solid chunk of voices are being raised against the university being sited at Żonqor Point.

Premier Muscat is quite the wordsmith, you have to admit. He can say pretty much anything he likes and the world at large swoons at his feet, dazzled at his perspicacity and sheer marketing brilliance.

A stonking great majority of 36,000 voting souls is evidence of this little thing, after all, and who am I, a mere mortal, to argue with the voice of the people, so loudly trumpeted? To quote a slogan that had gained notoriety back in the day, when men were men and the West was won, however many millions of Germans can’t be wrong, so Hitler’s accession to power was legitimate.

Let me not be misunderstood as the guy who had referenced it had been: it’s to the slogan only that I’m referring, Heaven forfend that anyone takes this to mean that I think that Premier Muscat is a reincarnation of the Nazi swine or anything like that. That having been made clear, the fact remains that Premier Muscat is an accomplished propagandist, a practitioner nonpareil of the Dark Arts made so notorious by (now) Lord Peter Mandelson.

Or is he?

The Żonqor Point story is, from where I’m sitting, starting to run away from Premier Muscat, because he’s finally found ranged against him not just the “negative Nats” alone, or the tree-huggers alone, or the academics alone, or some less-than-gruntled MP alone. All of these and more are coalescing into a pretty solid chunk of voices that are being raised in protest against this increasingly hare-brained looking American University of Żonqoria or whatever it is that it’s eventually going to be called.

It seems that being a student at the Premier Joseph Muscat University of Żonqoria will be a handy way of gaining access to the Schengen zone

It’s not surprising that the heretofore Master of All He Surveys, Premier Joseph Muscat, is not getting it all his own way about this cunning plan.

The environmentalists, including the Conservationist Bird-Killers, for Pete’s sake, and many influence-wielders in the area, significantly numerous amongst them being Labour councillors, are kicking up a heck of a stink about such a large chunk of land being given away, free, gratis and for nothing, to an entrepreneur whose business plan seems to revolve pretty much around getting his claws into said chunk of land and then charging quite a few bucks to people to use it.

And then we have the academics, or we would have if they roused themselves into anything approaching a waking state, who are getting increasingly worried about the credentials of the entrepreneur and his good ole’ buddies to be called ‘a university’. The convenient way in which the relevant regulations seem to have been judiciously tweaked to accommodate the achievement of said academic credentials, that would have been impossible to achieve a few days ago, has raised eyebrows and no mistake.

It’s time for the guardians of academic standards and the controllers of the quality of educational standards to stand up and be counted. Irrespective of whether Premier Muscat and his entrepreneurial best mates are panting for it, calling some half-baked residential college for the offspring of the moneyed classes a university should not be allowed, unless it really deserves to be called one.

In other words, I, as an alumnus of Tal-Qroqq and a very minor member of staff there, demand that the people who have control over this, and I don’t mean Minister Evarist Bartolo and the other nodding puppies sitting on the back shelf of Premier Muscat’s speeding self-drive car, make sure that my degree is not devalued by association with this commercial project of dubious parentage

Are you reading this, Martin Scicluna and the members of your board?

There’s another phalanx of people who should be coming on board to fight this ridiculous notion that a university is something which you can stick into a field of what we’re being fed and let it grow: they are those people who were against selling our passports to all-comers, as long as they have money.

It seems that being a student at the Premier Joseph Muscat University of Żonqoria will be a handy way of gaining access to the Schengen zone, and while I have no real beef with anyone who wants to get into Europe, I do rather hope that this won’t lead to my finding myself tarred with the same brush when our European partners finally get fed up of Premier Muscat’s handing out of laissez-passers to all-comers.

All of this opposition, eminently justified as it is, appears to be just like water off the proverbial’s, however, because Premier Muscat has decreed it and, therefore, it has to be so, objections to gesticulating immigration consultants and posturing posers notwithstanding.

It’s not only Premier Muscat who can say what he likes and get away with it, of course. One of the minor stars of his panoply, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, had put into train a resoundingly star-studded panel to review the situation and come up with suggestions about how our justice system can be improved.

It became known by the surname of its most august member, the Bonello Commission, and one of its suggestions was that the manner of appointing members of the judiciary should be changed, moving away from the British tap-on-the-shoulder method to a more transparent way of doing things.

Not that the old system hasn’t served us well, and not even the most die-hard Lil’Labour Elf could say that previous PN governments had only appointed PN stalwarts to the Bench, but things change and Bonnici had promised a change.

The recent spate of appointments to the Bench reminded us that, for all the pretty promises and noble notions, things have not changed. There’s much to be said about the appointees themselves, but being a realist, I’ll let others say it: all I’m pointing out is that for all his fine undertakings, Bonnici did not deliver.

He said in his own defence that the Bonello Commission had come up with such a wide range of suggestions and he wanted to implement them as a whole, which obviously takes time.

Yes, well, it would take time to bring all that into effect, but the suggestion regarding the manner in which judges and magistrates are chosen was and remains a stand-alone one, it doesn’t need anything else to be done except for the government to adopt it.

But this would mean that the government would have to forego the opportunity to make its own choices in its own interests, you might say but I certainly couldn’t comment (snide grin) and there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

Not with Premier Muscat at the helm, sticking up for all his appointees and their scintillating qualities, as evidenced by the way he keeps that Phyllis Muscat person insulated from all criticism. You have to wonder, though, just how long he can keep the hounds at bay and which of his appointees will be thrown out of the wagon first. My sources tell me that there’s a certain minister in the North who is looking somewhat harried, in this context.

A very good Sunday lunch was had at the Harbour Club in Valletta, in salubrious company, even if one of them has this nasty habit of creaming me at online Scrabble all the time. Other mealtimes were taken up by family gatherings which interest no-one but the participants, so that’s your only recommendation this week.

imbocca@gmail.com

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