Readers will have heard that the University of Malta will be closed for business for the two days of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM). Staff and students were served with a notice from the rector which will effectively put us on forced leave on November 27 and 28. The idea came from the CHOGM organising committee and the reason given was “national security”.

Much as I enjoy holidays, I’ve half a mind to sneak into my office on the 27th and do a full day’s work, middle finger held up at all times. Weather permitting, I might even give a lecture to the cats. There are three reasons for my insubordination.

First, because no one actually believes that this has anything to do with national security. Whatever it means, national security usually has to do with people, places, or people in places.

The average University student is around 20 years old, good-natured to a fault, and not terribly given to anarchic plotting. Their lethal arsenal consists of a tablet, a smartphone, a folder full of lecture notes and photocopies, and the odd pen and pencil. The worst offenders have criminal records that include such heinous acts as parking in the wrong place and not handing in their essays on time.

Try as I might, I really can’t see how this docile species could possibly be seen as an imminent threat to national security. As for lecturers, no amount of mind-altering substances could bring me to imagine Oliver Friggieri firing his pistol at a royal couple and starting World War III.

That’s as far as people are concerned. Regarding places, the logic is equally obscure. That’s because it’s not just the Msida campus, crucible of global unrest that it is, that will be cordoned off for the day. The list includes places like the University botanical garden at Argotti in Floriana. The things you could do with a saguaro cactus, shall we say.

Forget national security, rumour has it that the real reason behind the forced leave is traffic, and people out and about generally. It seems that the mighty of this world wish to have Malta’s roads to themselves, freshly-surfaced and free of the kind of excremental riff-raff called ‘us’ that usually clogs them

If that rumour is as right as I think it is, it would mean that whoever came up with this forced leave idea is playing a nasty and deceitful game. Which would be a splendid way of making us feel part of the Commonwealth. That part which is best kept off the roads and out of sight, that is.

There’s a second and related reason why this whole matter stinks. In countries where democracy and political decency are second nature, the assumption is that people will get on with their lives while those in power hold meetings and such.

I’ve half a mind to sneak into my office on the 27th and do a full day’s work, middle finger held up at all times

It is only in places where things are dodgy that governments go to great lengths to create triumphalist wonderlands while the world watches. (Delusions of global grandeur are a staple of this game.) Two examples come to mind.

Last month, China marked Victory Day with a massive military parade through the streets of Beijing. Not content with the thud of thousands of boots on the ground, the Chinese authorities set about imposing a set of jaw-dropping restrictions in the weeks leading up to the event.

They included shuttered businesses and public institutions, a ban on broadcasting, and even a small army of monkeys trained to destroy the nests of students... sorry, of birds that threatened to make the sky unsafe for military jets. They also included a draconian traffic curfew.

The result was that, on the day of the party, the skies above Beijing were free of smog, and an unnatural blue. The roads were quiet and peaceful. And so on. The following morning, things were back to a cacophonic and grey normality.

The second example takes us to Azerbaijan, where the European Games were held earlier this year. In Baku, photography was banned, stray dogs shot and incinerated, and plastic cladding draped over buildings to simulate restoration. Weddings and funerals were banned to prevent traffic jams.

I’m saying two things. First, that the obsession with image that comes with hosting world events is a characteristic of dodgy regimes. Second, that it is only dodgy regimes that can pull it off anyway, simply because only they have the power to shut down a country. They get away with it, because they can.

The point is not that Joseph Muscat is some kind of dictator. He isn’t, and neither is his government a dodgy regime. Only this is not a matter of either/or. Democratically-elected governments can and often do resort to totali­tarian and undemocratic methods. The forced leave at University is a case in point.

I wish the University rector had told the CHOGM organising committee exactly where to put its concern with national security. Especially since he has otherwise done much to preserve the autonomy of the institution, which is what my third grievance is about.

A university cannot function properly unless it is autonomous. That means two things. First, an intellectual freedom to do research and produce knowledge and ideas. Second, a political freedom that lets it get on with its work without any meddling by the State or some other power. Clearly, neither of these can exist without the other.

One might say that it is only fair that the State should meddle. Since the University of Malta is funded by the taxpayers of Malta, it follows it should be accountable to them.

But that’s the point really. University owes it to taxpayers to be intellectually and politi­cally autonomous, because that’s what they’re paying for. A university that is docile is not worth a cent of their money.

It is in this sense that the CHOGM forced leave gives out all the wrong messages. It tells of a State that thinks of University as simply another government agency, which can be asked to close its shutters and go for a picnic at will. It also tells of an institution that is docile and accommodating, no questions asked.

If there is hope, it lies in the weather. The grigalata that hit us in December 1989 had no time for forced leave, national security or obsessions with image. It was two days of pure seasickness, and that was that.

mafalzon@hotmail.com

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