The kind of people who still shop at the market wouldn’t even know there’s a debate raging on. The rest are a handful of tourists, who wouldn’t follow Maltese current affairs.

Cardona should at least increase the market stall rentals significantly enough to reflect the prime high street location these hawkers will be enjoying.

These low cost businesses should not be privileged the way they already are.

Most of them are known to have made substantial earnings over the years in some form or other. In fact many are reputedly rich families by now.

But alas some politicians conveniently believe their professional moaning.

I seriously doubt that anybody boycotting the market to protest against aesthetic insenitivity actually falls within the hawkers’ core target. Well, perhaps they’ll see a drop in sales of coloured wayfarers.

Michael Falzon is not the same type as Ian Castaldi Paris, Cyrus Engerer, Robert Musumeci, Franco Debono, Lou Bondi, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Jesmond Mugliett – he is made of sterner stuff.

He is a politician who matured during Malta’s worst period when democracy was truly threatened and Malta was burning.

He is no opportunist who appeared from the comfort of some foreign country after the dust had settled nor is he some prima donna who requires constant attention or a spineless person requiring endless reassurance.

He may have been disappointed with the PN, and rightfully so, for a number of years, he may have denounced the PN but never renounced his Nationalist credentials.

The more intelligent of my market clients changed their line of business, but unfortunately the least enterpreneurial and least intelligent still think they can make a living from their stalls and keep blaming different situations for their lack of sales.

Cardona should put the situation as it is to them rather than giving them another imaginary glimpse of hope by relocating them to Ordnance Street.

‘…At the same time the Malta Chamber strongly deplores the state of affairs at the new entrance to Malta’s capital where a handful of hawkers seem to have been given the sacrosanct right to block Valletta’s new entrance with shabby stalls and kiosks. This is certainly not in line with the image which the Renzo Piano entrance is intended to project. The Malta Chamber therefore urges the authorities to take the necessary steps to immediately remove these stalls and kiosks and to draw up a proper plan for the use of the peripheral area.

As it claimed to a wide consensus in its Economic Vision 2014-2020, the Malta Chamber advocates the abandoning of an ‘everything goes’ mentality once and for all, in favour of a quantum leap of quality also in this regard. Quality is a maxim the country needs to adopt in all areas, and every effort must be done not to undermine this objective.’

So they never saw it coming eh? Some vision.