Sitting on the fence re the opera house site

Published: December 17, 2008 at 4:33am

This statement just about sums up everything I can’t stand about communication style in Malta: hedging bets, sitting on the fence, trying to keep everyone happy while offending no one lest they react badly. Notice how the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee carefully skirts the issue of whether or not it agrees with having a parliament house built on the old opera house site:

“…the use of the Opera House (sic) site should be such that the building’s use (sic) is sustainable and continually kept alive. The identified uses should interact with locals and tourists alike.” Whatever that second sentence means, I wish it had not been couched in that eternally frustrating opposition between locals and foreigners. I feel I have to write this in bold: locals are the people of a locality like Mosta. The people of Malta are the Maltese, not the locals. The colonial British in Malta referred to the Maltese as ‘the locals’ and we have picked up this mildly contemptuous description and run with it, using it to describe ourselves.

But anyway, just after circumventing the matter of the new parliament building, the Valletta Rehabilitation Committee highly commends the decision to move parliament out of the Grand Master’s Palace. Ah, but does it also highly commend the decision to move it to a building just inside the gate to the city?

The Times, Tuesday, 16th December 2008 – 18:57CET

Valletta Rehabilitation Committee welcomes City Gate project

The Valletta Rehabilitation Committee has welcomed “the much awaited project for the city gate/opera house site”. It said in a statement it agreed to the choice of world-acclaimed architect Renzo Piano whose vast experience and acquired knowledge of Malta’s capital city 20 years ago would surely translate into an iconic design in the entrance of this World Heritage Site. “The architecture adopted should relate to today’s line of thought and the use of the Opera House site should be such that the building’s use is sustainable and continually kept alive. The identified uses should interact with locals and tourists alike.”

The VRC also highly commended the decision to move parliament out of the Grand Master’s Palace so that the latter would once again regain its rightful place as the capital’s showpiece with the armoury collection being relocated to its original seat.




2 Comments Comment

  1. Marku says:

    “Vera qeghdin sew” is my reaction to statements like these – ma jmorrux jirfsu xi kallu!

  2. Mariop says:

    What did you expect them to say? A wrong word and…phtt….they’re gone! I still think that either a) the property is put to commercial use or b) the money is spent on something productive, like drilling a tunnel between Malta and Gozo ( I know, it costs more, but the benefits are larger too).

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