Like all good dictatorships, we get El Presidente’s wife as part of the package

The media have received notification, through the government’s Department of Information, that “Mrs Michelle Muscat” is to “host and address” delegates to the International Conference on Bilingualism, this evening at her husband’s office at the Auberge de Castille.

Did people vote for her? I hadn’t noticed. But as with all good dictatorships, El Presidente’s wife comes as an inextricable part of the package, gets to throw her weight around and even thinks she has some kind of role in government and the administration of the country.

Now this is purely an aside: why does somebody who speaks one language really badly (Maltese) and another hardly at all (English) have the gumption to address a conference on bilingualism.

Perhaps as an example of the disaster which ensues when a country’s complicated language situation is compounded by never having implemented a proper policy on bilingualism?