No.

“Khomeni of the trade department.”

Was his name Michael Camilleri by any chance? Just curious.

It is called ‘lanzit’. For once there is a Maltese word that fits much better than any English word to describe this situation.

I meant “better off” as in currently in a better position. More successful, if you like.

Sums everything up nicely.

from https://www.um.edu.mt/profile/davidzammit

David E. Zammit graduated with the degree of LL.D. from the University of Malta in 1993 and proceeded to read for the degree of Ph.D. in Legal Anthropology at the University of Durham (UK), graduating in 1998. He then completed a diploma course in tort law at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. He is a full-time Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Laws and Executive Editor of the Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights. He has conducted anthropological field research in Maltese courts and legal offices and contributed various papers to scholarly conferences dealing with the interface between law and culture. His research interests span legal anthropology, tort law and the law of evidence.

Maybe it is more valid for small, confined communities but I am sure it is applicable to all human beings. After all it is a reflection of a biblical episode of the murder of Abel by Cain.

I took Horatio Vella’s classes. It doesn’t make me a classicist.

My point is that nine times out of ten, those Maltese who are better off than you are likely to have cheated.

Malta is one of the least meritocratic places on earth, social mobility is miles behind other European countries, and cronyism is rife. That counts for academia too. Especially academia.

[Daphne – I think something has been lost in translation. Did David Zammit say ‘better off than’ or ‘better than’? He’s quoted as saying ‘better than’, which is how I read it, but then ‘ahjar minnek’ means both ‘better off than’ and ‘better than’ – the usual problems with one-size-fits-all Maltese vocabulary. The thing is that this is not only about money, and that’s what I was talking about here because I assumed it’s what Zammit meant. The average Maltese person doesn’t even acknowledge that there are such things as superior intelligence, gifts, talents or even physical appearance (hence the number of squat and homely ladies of 5′ brazenly saying they are models). Acquiring university degrees = intelligence, therefore anybody can be intelligent if they study hard enough. Those who are able to paint well cheated to get a scholarship to a school which taught them how, or had a patron saint who helped them get it, or had parents who cheated and got them the money to pay for it, and those who can’t paint are just unlucky because they didn’t get to cheat or have a helping hand – natural ability doesn’t come into it. And so on.]