This is a direct quote (my translation) taken from the Prime Minister’s speech in Marsascala a week ago: “There can be no place for monopolies in Malta today, and certainly not for those that have to do with university education. I’ve a feeling that some of the arguments that have been put forward in the past days can be traced back to a circle of vested interests that have much to gain from the current closed-shop university system, lorded over as it is by the few, for the few.”

It’s jaw-dropping, for at least two reasons.

First, I really can’t understand what exactly Joseph Muscat thinks he stands to gain, strategically speaking, from his ongoing vicious attack on the University of Malta. He is not normally given to reckless speeches, and he also happens to be a shrewd player who has proved himself a master at massaging and cultivating support banks.

Except on this one he’s done the exact opposite. I don’t think Muscat anticipated the wave of discontent, from the kind of people he likes to massage and cultivate best no less, on the Żonqor business. He probably thought it would be a whimper by Alternattiva Demokratika and a few rounds of nastiness by annoying columnists. In other words, nothing his friend Sadeen couldn’t bulldoze away in an afternoon’s work.

What he got instead was a groundswell among a surprising number of players opposed to the idea of building on ODZ land. If it isn’t quite yet the Front Kontra l-Golf Course, it certainly seems to be moving in that direction. He also got some applause from people like Mario Calleja, the mayor of Marsascala, who said on television that he would like to see a promenade of railings and bins that stretched all the way to Smart City. Only that variety of cabbage is not one Muscat is particularly interested in.

I really can’t understand what exactly Joseph Muscat thinks he stands to gain, strategically speaking, from his ongoing vicious attack on the University of Malta

One would have expected the Prime Minister to deal with the problem by corralling it and focusing his considerable prowess of persuasion on the ODZ issue. Instead what he did was open a new and entirely unnecessary front.

He decided that the best way to sell his university was by dissing his other one.

The reason I ascribe ownership of the University of Malta to the Prime Minister is also the second reason why I found his diatribe so astonishing. The image that came to mind when I first heard it was that of Goya’s painting of Saturn devouring his own children.

For all its intellectual autonomy (and I’m not being sarcastic), the University of Malta is a public institution. It is funded in large measure by taxpayers’ money and draws on an infrastructure provided by the State. Successive governments have upheld policies of fair and liberal access, financial support for students, and so on. The result is a university that is anything but a ‘closed shop’.

It is quite incredible – even if sadly consonant with the more extreme versions of neoliberalism doing the global rounds – that a government should turn on its own public institutions. It is downright pathetic that it should do so to indulge a bunch of wheeler-dealers who have never contributed anything to Malta (I use the word to mean place rather than nation), and who specialise in sharking about to get weak governments to give them land on which they can build their enclaves.

The Prime Minister tells us that all is well, that Sadeen’s benevolence will break the monopoly of a circle of vested interests lorded over by the few, for the few.

It’s the most perverse description of the University of Malta I’ve ever come across.

First, who exactly are ‘the few’ who supposedly hold court at Msida? Is it the rector, who took tenure to a chorus of curses on account of his political past and who quickly won over the fiercest of detractors through hard work, open-mindedness, and accessibility?

Is it people like Godfrey Wettinger, whose memory this column is dedicated to? Possibly, because he spent his life pulling rank and lording it over others.

He never encouraged young people to commit themselves to serious study. Nor did he once spend hours with me, at the time a student he didn’t know, to guide me through the limbo of a medieval manuscript. As for his contribution to the scholar­ship in the face of orthodoxy, it was entirely irrelevant and elitist.

The antidote, you see, is Sadeen.

Which leaves us with ‘the few’ who, according to Muscat, benefit from the Msida monopoly. Those few are so few that the best way to find parking at University is to be born there.

It’s next to impossible to find a room for a one-off lecture unless you book well in advance. And the campus is a busier place after 7pm than Republic Street.

The graduation ceremonies that are held every year in November are populated by parents who for the most part have never been to University themselves. The institution operates maturity clauses, outreach events, and a million other things to cast about as far and wide as possible.

The point is that the public is getting more value for its money than it ever will for its land donations to Sadeen.

The Prime Minister’s “circle of vested interests” is someone else’s chip-on-shoulder speaking. Or maybe he was playing to a gallery of mayors of Marsascala.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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