Remember Michael Camilio Precht? He was the Dane who gained access to Mater Dei Hospital last February, posing as a doctor to get familiar (and frisky) with the ladies. That he had managed to sneak past Mater Dei’s then ineffectual security shocked a nation, and this in turn shocked me. Why such an overreaction to an incident which could so easily have had far more damaging repercussions? Given the circumstances, I thought the bottom line rather harmless.
They say bad things have to happen for better things to take their place. Considering the bud was nipped before it could get out of Precht’s roving hand, I was almost glad it happened, and I wrote about it.
You see, I regarded it as an innocuous foreshadowing of a much-needed and long overdue wake-up call to a too trusting and largely unsuspecting island. That Malta needed a security wake-up call was obvious. I was glad that it was a benign and far from fatal incident which had ushered Malta into the real world.
Yes, welcome Malta to that world: a world where you just can’t trust everyone (and by extension anyone) and where bad things can and do happen. That article was an invitation to the authorities to take security seriously and accept that you can never be too safe or too careful.
There’s simply no place for ‘can’t-be-bothered’ complacency, cutting corners or passing the buck. Health and safety along with enforcement matter enormously. They have to be more than adequate. Tokenistic ‘Byzantine’ bureaucracy doesn’t quite cut the mustard. Here in Malta it’s either too little – or in another sense – too much.
There’s this very strange dual personality to enforcement in Malta. If you fail to display your trading licence, overstay your welcome in a timed parking zone or forget to switch on your car lights in a tunnel, responsibility is unambiguous.
And if you’ve ever moved house, you’ll know what I mean. Some local council employees responsible for issuing permits are among the frostiest, most implacable and unyielding human beings I have ever met.
When nobody knows who is responsible for the near death of 28 people, it doesn’t augur well
I have abundant first-hand experience of this and am now convinced that it’s this sort of ignorant rigidity that creates the ‘knowing-someone-who-knows-someone’ culture that thrives in Malta. Otherwise you simply can’t get anything done. There’s an uneasy feeling of an uneven playing field right beneath your feet – that you’re being deliberately conned or confounded.
On the other hand, if you wanted to drive your supercar here without a crash helmet at an organised charity event, no questions are asked, no obstacles encountered. You are neither second-guessed nor will you be asked for any sort of accreditation.
I am not being deliberately facetious, make no mistake. But when nobody knows who is responsible for the near death of 28 people it doesn’t augur well.
I have no reason to doubt that Paul Bailey was bona fide. And yes, I am aware that this was a great charitable cause that went horribly wrong. And yes again, I know that some accidents will always get through even the most rigorous safety net because, no matter how ‘safe’ you are, you can never completely ‘cover’ human error with 100 per cent success. But apart from the fact that this was a sorry excuse for ‘safe’, I rather think that if we channelled enforcement in the right places, that accident could have been prevented or, at least, mitigated.
And just imagine if we were dealing with a perverted Precht or suicidal Andrea Lubitz instead of Bailey. Lubitz was the psychopathic German co-pilot who decided to plunge an aircraft – with 150 on board – into a mountainside. It may seem out there and far-fetched… until it happens.
I find that many of our priorities need to change. There are times we need to turn a blind eye, ease enforcement and allow for flexibility; and other times when we ought to clamp down on safety procedures and not be blasé or blinded by a magnanimous foreigner, even in the name of the most worthy cause.
I am not here to tell you that a skilled driver would have worn a helmet, would have questioned the placement of those controversial chicanes or the close proximity of the spectators and, all the while, been able to control that vehicle.
I have no answers to those questions I’m afraid. I don’t even know whether there are experts who survey racetracks before such events to make sure everything is as close to 99.9 per cent safe as possible.
What I do know, from people who were present, is that many of the spectators flouted even the most minimal safety procedures that were in place, in full view of the soldiers and police officers present. They climbed over the chest-high two-tier corded ropes that had been placed about two metres behind the aluminium police-type barriers; and they did this to secure a better vantage point.
This, of course, is another form of contributory negligence that went completely unchecked. Although far from a safe set-up to begin with, had those people been behind the ropes, and not immediately behind the barriers, they’d have been in a better position to make a run for their lives.
On a happier, more hopeful note, the incident highlighted Malta’s excellent world-class healthcare. It also identified the efficiency of those emergency ambulances (Red Cross and hospital-owned) and the generosity of the Maltese people who rushed in droves to donate blood.
The hospital may have been built with ‘Third-World’ inferior concrete, may have a shortage of beds and a highly questionable security system in the recent past, but the level of care is second to none; Which makes all the other enforcement issues even more upsetting. You have world-class healthcare within its own very Third-World limitations.
And there you have it. The bundle of contradictions and paradoxes that are Malta.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com