Will the Eff Ay Ay please eff off?
A woman called Astrid Vella is going about town making the outrageous assertion that she speaks on my behalf. She doesn’t. I have never voted for her. I am not one of the 1,500 who signed her meagre petition, and I am not a member of her organisation.
To compound the confusion, the man who is delegated to speak on my behalf, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, failed to consult me as to how I wish him to vote on the St John’s museum project. Perhaps he asked some of his other constituents in Mosta, but if so, I haven’t heard about it. Instead he consulted Astrid Vella, the very person who thqueamed and thqueamed until she was sick when he refused to do her bidding and resign the parliamentary seat that I helped put him in last March, and which I helped him stay in, in the face of widespread public calls for his resignation. He also forgot that he owes his allegiance to the Nationalist Party – it was people who supported the Nationalist Party, myself among them, who voted for him – and instead spent rather too much time chatting to the Eff Ay Ay, which has long been infested by the Sliema AD types who nearly scotched our entry into Europe in 2003, with their repeated pestering of people to vote AD. One must inwardly laugh at the delicious irony of the Sliema petit-bourgeoisie voting for an extremist left-wing group like AD, in the belief that they are liberal.
Last March, these Sliema AD types behaved the same way. They didn’t mind having Alfred Sant as prime minister, they said, as long as they could teach Lawrence Gonzi a lesson because of that block of flats in their backyard. So because of the block of flats in Astrid’s backyard, and her years and months of agitation among the Sliema crowd, we almost got That Man as prime minister for another five years. That’s not quite right: it was a block of flats in her front yard that started the trouble, a block of flats planned for Sliema’s Il-Pjazzetta area. It would have cut off the sea-view from her own block of flats, the one built on the site of one of those old Sliema townhouses her family owned and which she so admires.
Then Astrid Vella and Joseph Muscat were caught on film congratulating each other with a kiss outside the parliament building in which, or so she tells us, he doesn’t deserve to be housed. A basement in the stump-end of Valletta is what he and his like deserve, she has said. She seems to have changed her mind. “We were very impressed with Joseph Muscat and his keen interest in the project,” she said. That’s right, Astrid. I’m sure it was the project he was interested in, and not the political advantage to be gained from it.
The Eff Ay Ay is not an environmental organisation. It is a political one. Environmental organisations do not hijack the democratic process and seek to replace it with their own decisions. Environmental and heritage organisations behave as Din L-Art Helwa does, and as it did in the St John’s case. They wait until the environmental impact assessment and technical reports are ready. Then they read them, discuss the matter, and reach a decision.
Astrid Vella and her Eff Ay Ay chose another approach, that of hysterical gossips rumour-mongering on a street corner. I’m not surprised she found Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party “impressive”. They seem to have much in common. First she clashed with Din L-Art Helwa over the matter of environmental impact assessments, telling its president Martin Galea on television that she doesn’t believe in them and doesn’t want them because they are invariably flawed. Then she took to the streets and the internet with her conspiracy theories, her half-truths and her half-baked misinformation, telling people that the churchyard is full of the dead bodies of the “heroes of the Great Siege, who fought to defend Christianity in Malta and Europe” (oh, please).
She implied that it was the ground beneath the cathedral, and not the ground beneath the square outside, that would be excavated. She said that the tapestries should not be housed in bunker-like conditions, when any fool with the merest knowledge of conservation knows that this is precisely how they should be housed. The greatest enemy of ancient tapestries is UV rays. Even if they are displayed above ground, it will have to be in a windowless bunker. Why ruin a perfectly good building by turning it into a windowless bunker? That’s why many museums the world over have more space underground than they do above ground. At least, the very many I have visited are that way. Perhaps Mrs Vella hasn’t been to many museums. She hasn’t seen many tapestries, either, because she thinks that the ones at St John’s were made at the famous Gobelins manufactory outside Paris. AD repeated the error in its press release, congratulating her on her success. Public life in Malta is coming to seem like a naked party in a Jacuzzi.
Then Astrid’s side-kicks chimed in. Why doesn’t the government take over a palazzo for the tapestries? This comment, like the ‘bunker’ one, was most revealing of the fact that this bunch of amateurs – truly, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and the devil finds work for idle hands – haven’t a clue what in God’s name they are talking about. The tapestries were designed to cover every inch of the nave of St John’s Cathedral. So it stands to reason that any building in which they are displayed must be the size, shape and height of the cathedral nave. There are 29 tapestries, and they hang two storeys high at least. I’d like to see the palazzo in which they can be housed. I rather suspect it’s in Rome, and was built by a papal prince in the 16th century.
The St John’s museum project is dead and gone, and Astrid Vella, floating in the heady first rush of delirium, is happy to be remembered not for a grand project, but for stopping it happening. Now she plans to stop another project – the Renzo Piano parliament building. Ecstatic after her embrace with Joseph Muscat at the entrance to the current parliament, she gave us her word. “Now we have to stop the parliament project,” she said. Oh really, Astrid? And who is this ‘we’ – the royal we, or you, AD and Joseph Muscat? Suddenly, I find that decisions in this country are being taken by Astrid Vella and Joseph Muscat, neither of whom was elected by the people, by AD – which has no seat in parliament but hopes to get one by devious means – and by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who I trust will consult his Mosta district constituents next time he has a decision to make, rather than a bunch of people from Sliema who voted AD or didn’t vote at all. I find it hurtful that Pullicino Orlando, by his actions, helped those who went out of their way to crucify him, foremost among them the Labour Party, AD and Astrid Vella of the Eff Ay Ay, and caused a great deal of upset to those who got him through that terrible time.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Labour government systematically undermined, shut down or failed to constitute the institutions which are the cornerstones of democracy. In one infamous interview, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici told The Sunday Telegraph that Malta doesn’t need law courts because we have “the people’s courts”. The country was reduced to mob rule. Now we are heading in that direction again, only this time the mob has neither chains nor lorries. Organisations like Astrid’s Eff Ay Ay have systematically undermined public trust in the Malta Environment and Planning Authority, with a steady drip and occasional outright flood of hostility, and accusations of corruption and wrong-doing. That done, they have now positioned themselves as the alternative decision-making body on capital projects. The function of the MEPA on such projects has been rendered superfluous. Capital projects cannot now reach the MEPA stage unless Astrid Vella and Joseph Muscat say so. Otherwise, they’ll just scotch the project.
In case you haven’t twigged yet, this holds true even for private sector projects, which means that decisions on capital investment worth millions of euros and hundreds of jobs – even foreign direct investment – ultimately lie in the hands of an unelected housewife from Sliema. You don’t need me to point out how dangerous this is, and how undemocratic. Above all, Mrs Vella is accountable to nothing and nobody. Planning authority and government officials, if they are suspected of corruption, are pulled through the wringer. They face criminal prosecution and heavy penalties. But if Astrid Vella is offered a flat in return for keeping her mouth shut about a project instead of agitating against it, spreading rumours and conspiracy theories, and colluding with the unelected leader of the opposition, then that is not a criminal offence. I rush to insist that I am in no way saying that Mrs Vella and the Eff Ay Ay are corrupt and susceptible to this kind of persuasion. I am merely pointing out that they have been laid wide open to it, and that the public is now forced to take it on trust that this will not happen, just as we took it on trust that a chief justice and appeals court judge would not take cash in brown envelopes in exchange for reducing the sentence of a drug trafficker. At least they were officers of the court, and prosecutable.
The public should never have been put in this position. It is quite horrendous, after all we went through in the 1970s and 1980s and our determined battles for the rule of law and for decisions taken by the appropriate institutions instead of according to the caprice of individuals. So how did it happen? In anthropological terms, Astrid Vella is a folk leader. She has tapped into public disaffection with the MEPA and with authority in general. Folk leaders represent an alternative form of leadership, one that harks back to pre-democratic days. They emerge in undeveloped societies. But we are no longer peasants. Or are we?
Mrs Vella first campaigned for the reform of the MEPA, which was a laudable objective and the right way to tackle the reasons for people’s irritation with it. She moved on from that, to winding up people against the MEPA even more than they were wound up already. People were originally wound up because their planning permits weren’t getting through quickly enough, but she gave them something new to get angry about. Apparently, everyone in the MEPA is corrupt. The whole thing should be shut down. That’s a bit like saying that because Noel Arrigo and Patrick Vella took bribes, the law courts should be scrapped and replaced with – oh yes – Karmenu’s “people’s courts”.
As Astrid Vella rushed about in a haze of petitions signed by a mere 1,500 who probably didn’t visit the information exhibition on the project, which the cathedral foundation put up, people were left standing in a bewildered daze. Only now that the project has been well and truly ruined have they stopped to ask what it was actually all about.
Next time an out-of-control Astrid ventures into the public forum to claim that she speaks on your behalf, do as I have done, and object. Even if you agree with what she is saying, you should object as a matter of principle. Nobody has the right to claim to speak on your behalf unless you have expressly mandated this person to do so. People who claim, with absolutely no evidence, backing or popular mandate, that they have been delegated to speak for others are totally out of order. They need to be reminded that they speak for nobody but themselves and for the paid-up members of their outfits. How many paid-up members does the Eff Ay Ay have? We don’t know, because this appears to be classified information. Mrs Vella speaks in terms of signatories to petitions, and not in terms of members. And that alone should raise doubts in our minds.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
21 Comments Comment
Reply to Alan Click here to cancel reply
The prime minister did not knuckle under because of what FAA or private individuals had to say about the project, but to avert a public rift with his own backbenchers on the issue. Furthermore Joe Poodle Muscat is nothing but an amateur opportunist trying to take credit for stopping a project that never met with public approval anyway whatever he may decide to say now.
Finally, publicly villifying, denigrating and demonising individuals willing to stand up and be counted is demeaning and unworthy. One would have thought that such Nazi-Fascist tactics came to an end with the Mintoff era in ’87.
[Daphne – You are a very trying person, Sybil. We all know that the prime minister’s main aim was to avert a parliamentary crisis. The person who created that situation was Astrid Vella. Had she let the project go through the normal channels, without agitating and inciting people to anger, things would not have come to a dangerous head. But she wanted them to come to a dangerous head, because she is incredibly irresponsible. Either that, or she is incredibly unaware, and doesn’t realise that positiions of influence demand that one behaves responsibly. Hence the difference in approach between REAL heritage groups and politicised groupings like the FAA, which is run by pro-AD and pro-Labour individuals, and by those who have a grudge against the Nationalist Party and need an outlet for it.
Astrid Vella and her disgusting group have spent the last three years or so starting whispering campaigns that slander others, spreading misinformation and rumour, and inciting misplaced rage among the gullible and the easily-exploitable. Now if she can’t stand the heat, she should get out of the kitchen – an unfortunate way of putting it given that this is precisely what she has done, and it shows.]
The problem with these environmental groups is that they are so bloody fundamentalist.
The problems are two: 1) suffrage 2) accountability.
“I have been indifferent to these plans from the start (quite unlike my view of the plans for the bomb-site, which is very strong) so whether they came to fruition or not was neither here nor there to me” DCG last week
Hi Daphne, they say that a week is a very long time in politics, apparently this applies to you too. While I agree about some representational statements you made, I cannot but notice the character assassination going on vis-a-vis the person that crossed ‘dangerously’ your party! Can you please explain the dangerousness of it all?
[Daphne – What you are seeing here is a phenomenon called a backlash. When things reach crisis-point, public opinion is mobilised and regroups. I was indifferent to the project, yes, and would have stayed indifferent had Astrid’s arrogant claim to speak on my behalf – when I sent back the petition request I received with instructions to send me a copy with an ‘I do not agree with this petition’ box I could tick – not mobilised me to speak out. I am not the only one.
Up until now, many people have more or less ignored or overlooked Astrid as a sort of whining sound in the background, like a mosquito you can’t quite be bothered to swat. Now she has pushed things to breaking-point, and she’s fool enough not to realise it. In public affairs there is usually a tipping-point, and for Astrid, the tipping-point is now. I can actually ‘feel’ opinion crystallising. Yes, some of it is crystalling in her favour. But the previously indifferent ‘who is this Astrid’ lot are now waking up and asking themselves why she is marching around telling us what projects ‘the people’ want and what projects ‘the people don’t want’ when she hasn’t asked the people.
I object to such posturing on principle. I want to be asked, before somebody speaks on my behalf. And because I have a deeper understanding of how public opinion works, I don’t make the mistake Mrs Vella does, which is to assume that the only ones with an opinion are those shouting in the arena. She repeatedly fails to factor in the existence of something called a silent majority. Political parties which do that are doomed to failure. Alfred Sant twice made the mistake of listening selectively, and look what happened. Astrid is no different.
As for character assassination, I find it amusing that I can write about any politician and this is all right, but writing about Mrs Vella is ‘character assassination’. You may not yet have woken up to the fact that Mrs Vella has now entered the political arena. Once one does that, one is treated like a politician. If she does not wish to be written about and have her motives questioned in the same way as politicians, she is in the wrong business.
I agree with you, Daphne. But I ask, what is more worrying, a Sliema housewife holding Mepa and the government hostage, or that she is allowed to do so by the rest of us?
What has happened here is not new. The hunting lobby had (at least that is in the past, thank goodness) imposed their will on the rest for ages. Another example are the Ghadira slum-owners.
It seems that anyone who can scream loudly is able to impose his will on the rest, who in turn grumble, but in the end will knuckle under.
Daphne, I sincerely think that by giving Astrid Vella merit for what you call ‘dangerous’ and ‘crisis-point’ situations, you’re actually over doing it. I think people like you helped growing this monster out of this little lady from Sliema. Don’t know if our prime minister took her into consideration when stopping the project, if he did, I personally think that was the only mistake he did in this whole saga.
[Daphne – Am I over-doing it? Read The Sunday Times leading article today. Though I hesitate to say it, this is another incidence of lay-men questioning expertise, confusing fact and opinion, and giving all opinions equal value on the basis that ‘everyone has a right to an opinion’ (as though you can somehow legislate against the formation of opinions in the privacy of people’s minds). This is the field in which I work. I work in public affairs, among other things. I am a trained observer and not a dilettante. Incidentally, something you let slip has helped confirm what I already suspected: that Mrs Vella’s miniature size and Violet-Elizabeth-Bott voice are being deployed to her advantage. In Malta, where the majority of people are 5′ and under, very small women who adopt a baby-goolie demeanour are looked upon as pets who can’t possibly bite. Tall women like myself who don’t bat their eyelashes, on the other hand, are frightening: we enter the realm of men, and are treated as equals, with no holds barred and no kid gloves. Why bring up Mrs Vella’s exceptionally small size if not because, subconsciously, it makes you feel protective? Many a man has learned to his distress that very short women can be as problematic as very small men, and for similar reasons.]
Just a query: what was Astrid Vella doing outside the parliament building when she knew that the project was being withdrawn? Her objective, right or wrong, was met. Any reason?
[Daphne – The obvious one: she is a disgraceful attention-seeker with very little dignity and even less integrity. She went for the cameras and for the publicity. What she didn’t realise is how that publicity would rebound on her, when those cameras caught her kissing the Labour leader. That went down really well back home in Sliema – the non-koccuti parts, that is.]
I suspect this is an answer to your article:
http://www.ambjentahjar.org/pressRelease/stJohns140209.htm
[Daphne – Yes, I know. I’m going to sit down and tackle it piece by piece, but not now. I’ll just quickly point out one lie which immediately springs off the page: that the advertising and trips carried out by the foundation were a ‘cost to the taxpayer’. The St John’s Foundation pays for everything through revenues earned from entrance fees. It is financially autonomous. Lies, lies, more lies and counter-knowledge.]
Daphne, you seem to need and expect so much consultation (from Jeffrey Pullicion Orlando etc.,) and yet neither the government nor the church, nor the said Cathedral Foundation consulted with any of us re whether we wanted the Cathedral project to be done the way they proposed it. Nor, may I add, has anyone been consulted re the opera house site or City Gate. I have already surmised that the new, proposed Houses of Parliament will cost the present administration many votes (the planned inauguration being as it is planned, just prior to the 2013 general elections), as the general public still wish to have an opera house/national theatre on that site. Will we all be consulted by the respective Nationalist MPs whom we elected before they give the go-ahead for this project? It works both ways you know. If you expect consultation, so do the rest of us.
[Daphne – My youngest son remarked the other day that one of the root causes of all this trouble in Malta is that schoolchildren don’t receive compulsory education in civics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civics as they would if they lived in the more highly developed EU member states or North America. I agree with him. We elect our representatives once every five years to take decisions on our behalf. Then we let them take those decisions. We may, indeed we should, lobby our MPs, and those MPs should take note of the wishes of their constituents – which is why Jeffrey’s consultation of constituents in Sliema who voted for another party is particularly puzzling and unacceptable to those of us who voted for him – but that’s about it. We can lobby, protest, make our opinion felt, march about, carry placards, but that’s about it. The buck stops with those institutions that have the responsibility for certain decisions: MEPA in the case of projects; parliament with other things. These institutions are free to take or leave our opinion, depending on what they think is best. In between general elections, we have a direct vote only on fundamental, earth-moving issues, like EU membership, in a referendum. But that happens once in a lifetime, because unlike Switzerland, this is not a referendum democracy – thank God.
It is precisely because people expect to have what is effectively a direct vote on everything that things move at a snail’s pace in Malta, whereas they speed ahead in more highly developed societies where people understand that they have elected MPs to represent them, and that certain decisions are out of their hands. What we have here is too many cooks spoiling the broth. Anyone who has run a business or any other organisation knows that executive decisions must be taken for things to move ahead.
How do you know that the general public wants an opera house or a national theatre? Have you canvassed opinion with a professional survey? And more crucially, have you carried out this survey after a public information campaign that fairly presents both sides of the argument and all the attendant facts and figures?
It is astonishing that so many Maltese people project their desires onto the ‘general public’, about whose desires they have no way of knowing anything. You will notice that when I write in favour of a parliament building, I do not claim to have the backing of the general public. This is not because I suspect that I don’t, but because people trained in public affairs don’t speculate about these things. They find out. Unless I am able to closely examine a survey broken down into many parts, and – this is the important bit – conducted after a professional information campaign rather than a campaign of lies and counter-knowledge, I will never make assertions of this nature. To use an analogy you will understand: you would not tell a patient he has cancer until you have seen the biopsy results.]
What are you saying, dear Daphne?? That JPO had to vote for this project for the simple reason that you ‘helped’ him through the terrible times? Are you telling us that you pretend that he vote for something that he was openly against as a pay back for helping him in terrible times? Why attacking him only when it’s an open secret that he was not the only one?
I do believe that Labour was right about JPO’s case before the election and you were one of orchestrated choir of apologist, organised by RCC and Joe Saliba that managed to hinder the truth coming out. Why did JPO had the need for help if he was innocent and victimised by the terrible Alfred Sant? It’s amazingly shameful and irresponsible if you knew the real facts and hid them just for sake to gaining vote for your party!! Is this called simply lying?! It is the best example of id-dnub ma jorqodx……..
[Daphne – Here’s another one who hasn’t had any lessons in civics. And please don’t call me ‘dear’, when it is used with sarcasm; it’s so declasse. What I am saying is this: I and several thousand others put Jeffrey where he is so as to represent us. That’s why it’s called representative democracy and why our parliament is called the house of representatives. Therefore Jeffrey should act according to our wishes, interests and desires and not off his own bat, or according to the wishes, interests and desires of AD and Labour supporters from other constituencies. The way for him to discover what we want him to do is to keep in touch with us. Is this so hard to understand? Jeffrey does not represent himself. He represents us: Nationalist Party supporters of X and Y district. When I wrote in his defence as half the country called for his resignation, including Astrid Vella, I made just this argument: that we elected him, and only we have the right to remove him. In the interim, he is answerable to us, and if he fails to be answerable to us, we will not elect him again. We will choose somebody who acts in the interests of his constituents and the party they support. I do not want to be represented by somebody who puts at risk the government I voted in, and I am certain that my fellow constituents, who are not mad if my daily trips round town are an adequate observation, feel the same way.
As for your second paragraph, if only you knew. In fact, you know nothing, but present it as fact.]
[vanni – I agree with you, Daphne. But I ask, what is more worrying, a Sliema housewife holding Mepa and the government hostage, or that she is allowed to do so by the rest of us?]
You are exceedingly naive if you think that it is a Sliema housewife who has been holding the government hostage. Oh God, give me patience!
[Daphne – It is a Sliema housewife who created the environment in which this could happen. The Nationalist MPs in question would not have behaved the way they did if they had not been made to feel that their actions would be perceived as heroic. If they carry on in this way, and the country and economy are subjected to the problems of government instability, their actions will come to be seen as irresponsible and selfish, as they are already by those who are in business, and who suffer immediately there is a hint of trouble up above.
Only a few people want trouble, and they seem to want it all the time. What the rest of us want is a quiet life, and to get our jobs done in peace, without screaming, shouting and tantrums on the national stage.]
What baffles me most in all this is that our government appeases the Astrids among us at the expense of risking huge private commercial (even foreign) investment. There are projects worth millions of Euro that have been awaiting MEPA approval for years and everyone just sits there waiting for them to rot and die. Or maybe they would just take their money elsewhere and then they won’t need to take any decision. The opportunities being lost are huge and nobody bats an eyelid.
I’m not saying it should be the other way around either but this blatant reverse discrimination is back firing and the PM has to carry that responsibility squarely on his shoulders.
[Daphne – I’m so glad you brought this up, Pierre. Like you, I know how projects worth many millions are being lost on a regular basis. Like you, I know that Malta no longer attracting FDI in capital projects because of the fear of ‘environmental’ groups – Smart City was an exception because it was a government initiative. And like you, I also know that even Maltese investors are taking their money elsewhere, and ploughing it into projects in the south of France, Italy, North Africa and eastern and central Europe. Some of that money would have stayed here if it weren’t for a small group of people who are essentially anti-capitalist rather than ‘environmentalist’.]
Daphne, since when do MPs and ministers consult their constituents before taking a vote? Do you think Mintoff should done so in 1998 when taking the vote for the Cottonera Waterfront? Can you please stop for one second and think? Could it be that the whole St. John Project might be a big mistake and that for once you could be wrong on the whole issue?
I would like to remind you that is not the first time that Pullicino Orlando took a stand against a project that could do more harm. I think he has qualities that no other MP has.
[Daphne – I kind of object to being instructed to think, since it’s generally what I do. Yes, it’s not the first time that he took a stand against a project, but he did so when the government was considerably more stable. Had I been in his position, and in the position of the other four MPs mentioned – Robert Arrigo, Ninu Zammit, Censu Galea and Jesmond Mugliett – I would have set out the priorities before taking a decision. One doesn’t take decisions in a vacuum. It doesn’t help that all five of them have a grudge and a grievance. It makes them look so cheap. I hope they understand this. It looks really bad when you come across as somebody grinding an axe.
It’s actually quite disturbing how people can’t separate issues. The quality of the St John’s project is one issue. The way it was handled is another issue. I’m not concerned with the quality of the St John’s project here. I’m concerned with the way the matter was handled, and the implications of Astrid Vella’s politicisation of what was strictly a heritage issue. Whether it was a “big mistake” or not was not for us to decide on the basis of myth and rumour. There are structures in place to decide those things, and public opinion must be formed on the basis of correct information, not misinformation.
As for Mintoff, I hate the man, and I think that he behaved like a jerk, as always. As I wrote on an earlier post, you can’t expect loyalty or integrity from a man who shags his brother’s wife. Anyone who betrays his own brother is not going to hold back from betraying his party. People who vote against their party are heroes only to the party’s enemies, except that Mintoff is never going to be a hero to me. I still despise what he did, even if it resulted in the near-miracle of EU membership. I only hope that the renegade MPs within the Nationalist Party realise that they will earn contempt from their party’s supporters, not admiration, if they carry on this way – just as so many Labour supporters felt contempt for Mintoff.]
Daphne, on civics:
I am more than aware of all this. However, it was you who first mentioned consultation. You are also jumping to the conclusion that all people who have voted for the Nationalist Party want what this Government wants, and that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and others who were opposing the project were doing so in a vacuum – with no Nationalist voters agreeing with their point of view. On the contrary, they were probably representing quite a few of us. [Daphne – I have no doubt that Robert Arrigo thought he was, given that he comes from Astrid-land. I can just imagine the number of Sliema people who didn’t vote or who voted AD, who told him that they had voted for him. But Jeffrey certainly was not. I live in his constituency, remember, and I talk to people. Most of them haven’t a clue what the fuss is all about. Secondly, as government MPs, their duty was to correctly represent the project, countering the misinformation campaign emanating from the FAA and AD. Not having done so, they failed their constituents. Please understand that what I am saying is this: there is the world of difference between objecting to an idea and objecting to a project on the basis of correct information and technical studies. I’m racking my brains for a suitable analogy: let’s try this exchange of views. “I hate olives.” “Have you tasted them?” “No.” “Why not?” “I just don’t like the look of them.”]
No, I have not carried out any surveys asking people whether they want a national theatre on the site of the demolished Royal Opera House, or whether they want a parliament building, but I have a hunch (and I am not often wrong) that the national theatre would win hands down. [Daphne – Your hunch is right. It will win hands down at this point for EXACTLY the same reasons that the figure of Christ was the winning symbol for our euro-coin. Please do not tell me that you believe this is the way things should be done, and how projects should be decided.]
Borrowing your own analogy, one can often very strongly suspect cancer, even without a pathology report, although, of course, the latter would lend a final and definite diagnosis. Similarly, there’s only one way to find out what people want for the Royal Opera House site. Not doing so might turn out to be a grave oversight, seeing how emotionally involved people still are with the demolished building. [Daphne – You know what I think? That it’s going to stay that way, because everyone wants to have a say in the matter. A national theatre is not feasible, and the people who wanted Christ on our euro-coins want a national theatre. We have paid one architect and dismissed his plans already. Paying Renzo Piano and not following through on his project is going to be considerably more expensive, but I can see it coming.]
In the list of ex-ministers with a grudge it is worth pointing out the absence of Francis Zammit Dimech. I still remember his modest reply to a reporter who asked him how he feels a few days after the new cabinet was formed in March 2008. [Daphne – I remember that reply, too. He really stood out as a gentleman, while the others came across as exceedingly ill-bred.]
The ex-ministers have nothing to lose, even though it seems that they don’t care about their legacy, just because of a grudge. They can’t seem to comprehend that Gonzi’s choice of cabinet was highly popular with the public, and the ousted ones did not have the support of the general public even though they were elected by their constituents.
It still feels strange to me that both Pullicino Orlando and Arrigo, who were quite vocal about the fact that they were not appointed ministers (remember “it is not for me, but for the people who elected me”?), are acting against their own long-term personal interests. They must already feel that the probability of ever forming part of the cabinet is very low, to hold such a grudge and threaten the stability of the government out of spite.
Daphne, no not all projects – this project in particular. I’ve basically always agreed with everything else.
In his column today, Lino SPiteri states that 3 PM backbenchers were planning to vote against this project (Pullicino Orlando, Ninu Zammit and probably Mugliett). I doubt whether Cenus Galea is one of the backbenchers who is aiming to destabilise the Gonzi administration.
You are absolutely correct in saying that in St. John’s Square (to be precise where the bust of Enrico Mizzi is erected) there are no tunnels or graves or other things, but masonry material that was dumped after clearing the square from war damage. I remember when I was just a toddler seeing the dumping with my own eyes, including also the material of the temporary one-storey buildings, made of bricks, which were used as shops while the building in St. John Street, opposite the Co-Cathedral and square were being re-built. I know all this because my family owned some of the shops and I used to accompany my dad then.
I guess it’s a case of you reap what you sow for the government. Pullicino Orlando has now got the government by the short and curlies … I foresee interesting times ahead.
[Daphne – You can’t separate trouble caused to the government from trouble caused to the country. What exactly is it that you do for a living?]
[Daphne – You know what I think? That it’s going to stay that way, because everyone wants to have a say in the matter.]
Maybe that’s the best solution until we have a government which is more attuned to the country’s (real) needs and to the basics of good aesthetics.
[Daphne – You mean like a government made up of Joseph Muscat as prime minister, Anglu Farrugia as justice minister and Anthony ‘tie me up’ Zammit as health minister? Or is there another alternative that I have failed to spot?]
Now you know that I can’t ever trust Labour, but at the same time neither can I put my hand on my heart and say that I’m happy with this lot – and things seem to be getting worse. I’m sick of this arrogant “I know best” attitude, and by the looks of it I’m not the only one.
[Daphne – Well, unfortunately governments are not there to grovel. They are there to run the country. In 1996, we – well, not me, but people I know – voted out Fenech Adami’s government because they were “sick of this arrogant ‘I know best’ attitude” and within months they were gagging to have the arrogant lot back. Come back, all is forgiven! Just 22 months later, Fenech Adami’s arrogant lot were returned to power, with a majority of many thousands (by Maltese standards). Is there anyone anywhere in the world who is entirely satisfied with any government? At least in our country, with no pathetic coalitions, we know what we’re going to get, and it’s not Russian roulette. It’s that lot or the other lot, and you choose. Simple. I’m one of those boring people who take the long view. I rather suspect that the thinking which shapes so many people’s attitude to the government is the very same one that shapes their attitude to their spouse: a short-termist inability to foresee and assess consequences.]