Years ago, I bought at an auction a four-volume collection titled Li Storia ta Malta u Ghaudex bil Gzejjer tahhom u il grajjet li saru fihom, a 1916 publication running into thousands of pages and written by Giovanni Faure. It hadn’t cost much and I thought I had purchased a detailed insight into Maltese society and its history.
The books were less about Malta than what took place in Malta. The inhabitants were just spectators in their own country, awed by the British colonial power (1,000 pages on that), half believing they had a share in any of what went on. It was not Maltese history but someone else’s. No wonder I got the books for cheap.
When Prime Minister Joseph Muscat speaks of the migration summit as historic, you get the same gut feeling of colonial helplessness. One can only call a meeting ‘historic’ with hindsight. For the Prime Minister to compare the Malta summit on migration to the 1989 Bush-Gorbachev summit (we were spectators there too) or to the Yalta summit, when we were a colony, is to truly jump the gun.
It is like calling a film a blockbuster before it is actually released, which is what Muscat actually did with the Brad Pit-Angelina Jolie film shot in Gozo. It doesn’t look like a blockbuster so far and it won’t mean much to Gozo if it is a hit anyway, because the film is set in France.
What this country got for sure out of the migration summit and the CHOGM were tarmacked roads leading to nowhere, because, surely, there were much more deserving roads that needed a good tarmac than the road to Għajn Tuffieħa.
The migration summit and the CHOGM are about a Labour government deluded byself-importance
It takes immensely colonial thinking to allocate funds and resources into roads to be used by “foreign dignitaries”. The Nationalists did that too, of course, and it was stupid.
We are a sovereign State and do not need to prove anything to anyone. That many of Malta’s roads are a helter-skelter ride to oblivion is our business. It is pathetic of the government to pretend otherwise “in front of foreigners” and offensive to taxpayers who have to use those wretched roads every day.
The Prime Minister has defended the decision to close off major roads and limit sea traffic ahead of the Valletta Summit and the CHOGM, citing security reasons. He doesn’t think there is any real threat but won’t take the risk of putting us in danger after putting us in a spot. Malta is not a metropolitan city where draconian security arrangements can be taken because there are alternative routes, ring roads or other transport choices.
Meanwhile, for the CHOGM the government has closed off all schools and the university, temporarily suspended Schengen and has had to call in the help of the British armed forces to secure the island for both conferences.
Of course, the British have their reasons to have this former colony secured, since both their head of government and head of State will be here. They are the same British soldiers Muscat’s predecessor, Dom Mintoff, proudly kicked out in 1979 to achieve freedom, but, when our freedom is suddenly potentially at threat, it is to Britain that Muscat had to turn.
The migration summit and the CHOGM are about a Labour government deluded by self-importance. This is about a colonial mindset that is at the heart of the rot that undermines this country.
The success that is post-independence Malta is built upon Maltese ingenuity, Maltese entrepreneurship, Maltese initiative and, yes, Maltese opportunism.
There are times when this country goes to extremes, like when it sells Maltese passports to strangers or issues visas by the thousands, serving as a cheap stepping stone to Europe.
But there is another Malta, a proud Malta, one that can compete, that does not feel inferior, that has shed colonialism, thrives in an open, market economy and challenges its competitors without any sense of inferiority.
Days like these, when the country grinds to a halt to lay a red carpet for foreign dignitaries whose people back home can be jealous of this little country’s achievements, are days that humiliate the Maltese people.
We want to get on with our lives, make a living out of this overcrowded little island we call home.
Sirens and lights on arterial roads closed off to common commuters do not impress us as they evidently do the Prime Minister. We are not on an ego trip.
Yes, there will be hotel and restaurant bills to be paid when the events are over, but no one has calculated the economic cost. This delusion of importance does not translate into much, except for a monument clogging up a rare open space in Valletta.
Some international press may be mentioning Malta. But it is just a location.