Even the National Book Council wasn’t safe from the depredations of an unfit-for-purpose Malta Taghna Lkoll appointment
Please read this report about trouble at the National Book Council, how sales at the annual book fair it organises dropped by 40%, and how a book that should have been disqualified because it didn’t meet the entry requirements instead was selected for the first prize.
I’m afraid this was inevitable, as the chairman was yet another Malta Taghna Lkoll appointment of a person selected for services rendered to the Labour Party while being completely unfit for purpose.
He is Mark Camilleri, who can’t speak English at all, is barely articulate in Maltese, is extremely uncouth and ignorant despite pretensions of being an intellectual (an intellectual who can speak only a language spoken by 400,000 people), and is just 25 years old. He was on the president’s Malta Taghna Lkoll honours list at this year’s Republic Day ceremony and just didn’t turn up, embarrassing his political friends and spurning their award.
When the newspapers rang him to find out why, he said that it slipped his mind because he had better things to do. I suspect the real reason is that he doesn’t own a suit, shirt and tie and couldn’t be fagged to buy them.
Here’s the chairman of the National Book Council:
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http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Resignations-looming-on-National-Book-Council-20140118
Allow me to share a thought of a very dear friend. In memory of Rev Fr Anthony Sapienza SJ who dedicated a lifetime to books. He was one of the pioneers in organizing libraries and cataloguing their works. He worked at the University Library, the Jesuit Province Libraries, other libraries, Most of all he set up the Pope John XXII Library at the Jesuit House in St Paul Street Valletta and was instrumental in advocating for activities involving books, like exhibitions.
Later on at University the course for Librarians was held.
Fr Sapienza as far back as the late 60`s was also advocating for media, media education, media in the curriculum. Hardly was he ever in the public eye and hardly have his efforts been highlighted or aired in the media he so dealy cherished and loved.
It is with sadnes that I read this blog with all its negative aspects I just wonder what my dear friend would have felt had he read it as I did. So much to show how decades of dedicated, loyal and beneficial services offered by people to their country and people could be thrown down the drain at the scribble of a pen. Pity. Pity indeed.
Camilleri replaced Gorg Mallia. Enough said.
Sure, same brilliance!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorg_Mallia
Same argument, but this has more serious implications for obvious reasons:
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-01-19/news/sacked-for-criminal-association-cleared-on-a-technicality-now-a-vat-director-3722117121/
He could have worn a kaftan or a batik shirt.
A keffiyeh and an army suit perhaps?
What does this 25 year old inarticulate and shabbily dressed young man know about the book industry and the challenges it is facing? Can you imagine this guy meeting the chief of the UK Book Council, the Booker Committee or foreign publishing gurus? This government surely knows how to embarrass our country.
The book industry is not facing any challenges. It is flourishing. More books are published every day today than at any other time in history.
If the Maltese book industry is in trouble, then it’s down to the dire quality of the publications. You need to put good stuff in books if people are to buy them.
He sounds like Saddam Hussein declaring war on Iran.
Lest we never forget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ls7-NANt6aI
The problem is he is completely inarticulate in both English and Maltese. “L-ewwel preferenza ha naghtih”. The guy doesn’t know any language.