They say that a week is a very long time in politics and it's true; three is like an epoch. After three weeks in the wild, sumptuous and mysterious splendour of Rajasthan, coming back to Malta was an eye-opener.
For the first time in many a year it appears that the government and the opposition have finally seen eye to eye about something. SmartCity, after a shaky start looks, as if it is to become a moneymaking, job-spinning reality. It is to me poetic justice that the same party that outlawed any computer development in the 1970s and 1980s, keeping Malta tragically backward, has now agreed to back the most ambitious IT project that was cadged by the present government. The faster SmartCity becomes a reality the better off we will all be; at least that's what the political Tarot Cards prognosticate.
It seems plain that the MLP wish to adopt the SmartCity project as their own when they come to power in the next election. They will also preside over the ceremonial opening of the Mater Dei Hospital project and others instigated with much blood, sweat and tears by the present government. Such are the ironies of life.
I find it very galling indeed that the PN, which since the MEP election has taken as much notice of the electorate as Marie Antoinette playing with her Sèvres butter-churns and coiffured sheep in her hameau while France starved, should be so cavalier in its attitude towards the man in the street and so smug about being the only choice we have to elect to power in the next polls. We have the ubiquitous Joe Saliba informing us that it will be alright on the night and that the swings towards the MLP and the growing abstentions in every election since the last general one are mere blips and that, when push comes to shove, the electorate will do the right thing by the PN and once more place them in government.
Such brazen cockiness is now becoming irritating. The sad thing is that both parties offer six of one and half a dozen of the other and we keep electing governments by default; again and again, not because of what they can do for us but because the outgoing one was so incompetent.
I hate saying "I told you so" but this time it is irresistible. The lean honeymoon period with the EU seems to have come to an abrupt end and before any of us are aware of the benefits that we so avidly voted for in the referendum, Malta is being threatened with a plethora of fines for failing to comply with EU regulations. Apart from the infringements pertaining to the environment and the development zone extensions, the one that I see totally extra is the one we will get if the trigger-happy cohorts of the Ghaqda Kaccaturi, Nassaba u Konservazzjonisti have their way.
While the hunters demonstrated in Valletta I was in a country where birds are allowed to fly free and unafraid without so much as a toy gun popping to disturb their tranquil lives. As we took tea on the lawn at Delhi's prestigious Imperial Hotel, sparrow hawks swooped down to swipe a muffin or scone and a couple of eagles circled overhead. On Lake Pichola, in lovely, fairytale Udaipur, cormorants and herons dived into the shimmering water as ducks migrated in strict V shapes, honking happily in the knowledge that nobody was going to take a potshot at them.
No such utopia here; the bird sanctuary in Mellieha has been vandalised, while the bus stop and rubble wall near the Hagar Qim and Mnajdra temples have been daubed by threats of the type that by rights should make any civilised nation blush with shame.
What have the police done? Were I the PM I would not countenance any talks with thugs and would call upon the full strength of the law to keep order and peace. Heritage Malta has had to step up security lest a repeat of the desecration of Mnajdra should reoccur. How is it possible that the majority of us are powerless to put a full stop to this bullying from an over-indulged minority that acts like overgrown spoilt brats? What will happen to the temples once those giant mantra ray covers that are being paid for by the EU are put in place? I hate to think.
Getting back to the EU and the list of infringements that Malta will be fined for unless they are put to rights, I wonder whether we have bitten off more that we can chew when we joined and whether you and I, like the vast majority of people, thought that joining the EU would spell, for a tiny country like ours, jumping onto a gravy train.
Nothing could be further from the truth as never has the Maltese electorate been more disgruntled and fed up of the political situation as it is now. The hot news is that my fellow-columnist, the ever candid and insightful Lino Spiteri, has published his memoirs that span 40 years of Maltese home-grown politics. A must-read if there ever was one. For anyone who follows Mr Spiteri's contributions in this newspaper as religiously as myself, it is a given that the memoirs will give a very fair and overall interpretation to the events that have led to us being what we are. It will be interesting to read what Mr Spiteri has to say about integration, the run-up to independence, the interdict, the Mintoff years, the years of not so passive resistance, the volte face after 1987 and the events leading to his own exclusion from Dr Sant's coterie during the latter's 22-month stint as PM.
More local history, this time of the more antediluvian variety has been resuscitated and is raging once more. It all started when some bright spark decided that while Malta was hosting CHOGM last year, besides reaping the benefit of the Minister of Roads working like an Egyptian slave driver, the Queen should apologise to the Maltese people for what happened to both Italian and German sympathisers during World War II. The Queen alas did no such thing and still the controversy rages, more than 60 years on.
What happened was very sad indeed. In time of war many things happen which we all find most regrettable and that we would rather forget. Now there is a lobby that wishes for a monument to be erected in memory of those who suffered exile. Dear, oh dear, oh dear!
In 1942 we were an integral part of the British Empire and we had no such thing as a free choice who to back. Anyone so much as whispering approval of anything Mussolini did in nearby Italy was immediately suspect. The spine-chilling story my mother told me of how the army turned up at a local convent in the dead of night and before the whole school assembled in their nightgowns demoted the Italian Reverend Mother and installed a Maltese one had impressed me long before as an example of senseless bigotry and heavy-handedness.
I believe that all those who were exiled have now joined the heavenly hosts and if Australia-based Victor Zammit's "scientific evidence of an afterlife" does hold water you may be sure that the protagonists responsible have long had it out while we, descendants of both the pro-British and the pro-Italian factions, squabble uselessly and endlessly about monuments that will have as much negative impact as positive, possibly more. Instead it would be far better to concentrate on the injustices that are happening here and now, like the government's denial of the urgent need for divorce laws to be introduced, enabling people to marry again or the introduction of legislation that favours single persons like myself, an ever-growing lobby that eventually will be a determining faction in the way politics will be conducted in future.
Let the dead rest in peace and look to the future where global warming threatens our very existence and the struggle of Cross and Crescent has become as real as it was during the time of the Great Siege.