These days, when I look at Joseph Muscat, the word that comes to mind is ‘Chinese’. This has nothing to do with whether he has cravings for sweet and sour pork, or his carrying a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book in his breast pocket, or the Labour government’s obsession with signing multiple deals with the Chinese government. No. It’s the way he speaks. The Prime Minister’s statements have an unmistakeable tinge of Chinese propaganda slogans.
When I visited China some years back, I was intrigued by the multitude of posters papered over the city walls. Practically all of them featured energetic, ruddy-cheeked citizens in dynamic poses, looking towards the future with what looked like steely determination. I later found out that these were the latest in a long line of political slogans much favoured in China.
From the high-handed call to “Weed out Class Enemies” in 1966 to the more prosaic “Time is Money, Efficiency is Life”in 1984 to the boring “Maintaining Stability is of Top Priority” to the rather vague “Chinese Dream”, these are the slogans through which the Chinese government directs and inspires its citizens. Increasingly, the same type of sloganspeak is being utilised to continue ramming through the Labour government’s vision for the nation – one that coincides with that of developer/speculators like Sandro Chetcuti – and which is based almost exclusively on more development.
Take the Prime Minister’s reaction to the request for a moratorium on tower blocks. He dismissed it blithely – in much the same way as he would flick a spot of dandruff off his shoulders. He let rip a couple of Chinese-style slogans: “Not an option for the country to just stop,” he told us, followed by “We need to go higher”. (Incidentally – this nearly replicates the 1968 slogan “The sky is the limit, much can be accomplished”) Just like those propaganda slogans, Muscat’s statements are telegraphic, intended to give an image of dynamic progress, and ultimately, extremely condescending and insulting to citizens.
The call for some in-depth assessment of the proposal is a legitimate one. Considering Malta’s size, the knock-on effect that even one disastrous project could have, the sorry state of our overburdened infrastructure and the deleterious effects that overdevelopment has had on the island, it makes sense to pause before embarking wholesale on Muscat’s Dubai in the Med pipedream. It’s not as if anybody is asking for the whole country to grind to a halt (that will come about with total traffic gridlock caused by multiple projects starting at the same time).
Perhaps the Prime Minister is unaware of how he is coming across – very much in the same vein as the exponents of the bulldozer politics he criticised when still in Opposition
The very reasonable appeal is to take stock of the present urban and social landscape and existing infrastructure, and to study the potential impact that several massive projects will have on the people living in and around the areas to be affected. Even the most modest construction works have an impact on the traffic congestion rates, construction debris and noise pollution levels, let alone many of them taking place at the same time. Our sewage system can barely cope with the present influx – in my neck of the woods there’s a constant stream of stools bobbing out to the sea on a nearly constant basis. How is the system going to fare under a highly increased tonnage of turds?
Muscat states the obvious – that it is the government’s job to update the infrastructure. Unfortunately experience shows us that the government has done not much of that. The underlying infrastructure is patched up on a piecemeal basis and subjected to immense strains for the exclusive benefit of the favoured speculators and at the expense of communities.
Muscat claims that building higher is the trade-off we have to pay for not building in Outside Development Zone areas. This is not true. The Prime Minister conceded a huge tract of ODZ land to a mysterious Jordanian businessman. He leads a government that has enacted laws and policies which allow all sorts of development in rural and ODZ areas. It is truly a case of death by a thousand cuts. There is no trade-off. We will have urban, rural and vertical sprawl if the Prime Minister rolls on.
Perhaps the Prime Minister is unaware of how he is coming across – very much in the same vein as the exponents of the bulldozer politics he criticised when still in Opposition. He would do well to see what happened there. In the meantime we can throw slogans his way too. He should “Let a Hundred Flowers (not Towers) bloom” and “Seek Truth from Facts”.
• There is no such thing as a national poem. But if there had to be one, there would be no better choice than Immanuel Mifsud’s ‘Aqta’ Fjura u Ibni Kamra’. It captures the spirit of the times perfectly – the destruction of natural beauty, the arrogance of the Build-at-all-costs-lobby and the fatalism of those who believe the situation is beyond repair.
Mifsud wrote the poem when there were only a couple of buildings that could be considered as falling within the high ‘vertical coffin’ description, but his poem foresees the supreme arrogance of the towering monoliths that will shortly be blotting out the skies. He was prophetic about this aspect – hopefully not as prophetic as the last lines of the poem.
Read it, together with his latest anthology of poems – Huta – to see for yourself.
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt