If an alien happened to be passing by the Local Council quarters in South Street, Valletta on Tuesday evening and heard a loud cacophony, scrambling of chairs and insults thrown about with every breathing gap, he would have immediately thought that the council was debating a motion to knock down residents’ houses, without any compensation and without providing alternative accommodation.

It would certainly have never crossed the alien’s mind that the discussion was about an altogether different topic: flowers and candles.

I watched the scene unfold online and I was saddened beyond any degree.

A Valletta councillor was aggrieved by some people spontaneously – and legally – leaving flowers, candles and written notes at the foot of the Great Siege Memorial in front of the law courts, by way of paying respect to the assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Therefore he put forward a motion to sweep away the flowers.

A few fans of the motion turned up at this meeting. A man in the crowd argued that the monument was hijacked and therefore, “issa mmur naghmel ritratt ta’ Elvis”. Sadly he could not understand that people spontaneously chose the Law Courts monument because it represents justice – and that candles and flowers are also a sign of fervent hope that justice will one day prevail in a culture of impunity. The fact that a few days later someone put up a photo of former Prime Minister Mintoff on the monument, next to the one of Daphne Caruana Galizia, shows that to people’s mind it’s yet another ‘us and them’. Obviously Mintoff was not assassinated and certainly did not suffer any unresolved injustice in his life.

But there were sadder things than the actual nonsensical motion. It was the abysmal show of bad manners.

I do not point my finger at the woman who threw her seat back and made to lunge at another person in the crowd she disagreed with. I do not point my finger at the crowd of people who jeered at the late journalist’s family telling them “kien haqqha”; I do not point my finger at the man whose main argument was “rbahnilkom b’40,000, b’40,000, b’40,000!”. I point my finger at our increasingly failing system of education.

If I were the Minister of Education, I’d watch the grainy video of the meeting on loop, bang my head against the wall, and immediately set up a compulsory course for manners – young and old – so that in Malta of 2018, we no longer witness attitudes last seen in Don Camillo movies in 1950s.

Two Maltas: well-mannered and ill-mannered

It may prove difficult as, oddly, people are resistant to good manners, deeming it as something to abhor. A couple of months ago, BBC world service interviewed a Maltese man who described Malta as being “divided between circa 5,000 snobs and the rest of us.” Aha. What did he mean by snob? Someone who looks down on those regarded as socially inferior? Or did he mean well-mannered people who put forward an argument without shouting and pointing fingers and thrusting their faces only a centimetre away from the person they’re talking to?

I hasten to add here that has nothing to do with academic education or with the place you live; it has nothing to do with north and south or Sliema and Valletta. I know people who are professors at university, who live in somewhere like Attard, and reek of ill-manners.

Yes Malta is dived into two Maltas (Ranier Fsadni, I beg to disagree): one is the well-mannered Malta and the other is the ill-mannered one. And it’s high time we did something about this to seek uniformity. Therefore, we need to have educational structures so that all of us know:

how to stop and think about what is happening and what is being said;

how to formulate a thought, and analyse it before saying something about it;

how to build an argument based on logic (“Morru ‘l hemm għax dejjaqtuna” doesn’t cut it);

how when standing up to make a point you are not a stand-up comedian begging for laughs;

how not to get out of point;

how to always show respect to the person you’re addressing;

how to wait till it’s your turn before you speak;

how to manage anger and don’t charge at people at the first chance;

how to empathise with people – especially if they’re grieving for their wife;

how to know that the right to protest is a basic right.

As Alexander Mcall Smith, one of my favourite authors, says: manners are the basic building blocks of civil society – and it is high time that we realise that this is the fundamental problem in our society.


Back to the mental health issue. I fail to understand how a teenager dies when he escapes from Mount Carmel Hospital because of sheer lack of staff, and no one says anything; how a Mount Carmel carer who exposes dangerous conditions gets suddenly transferred from hospital and no one says anything; and then a couple of youths at the Nadur carnival – known for its crass black humour – paint a van with stupid words about mental health and even the President of the country speaks up. Priorities have all gone topsy-turvy.

krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti

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