GUEST POST/ My CHOGM Women’s Forum experience

I attended the CHOGM’s Women’s Forum on Sunday (opening event) and on Monday (day one). Here are some observations which show the lack of professionalism on the Maltese side.

We only got the invitation to Sunday’s inauguration ceremony two days earlier, on Friday, by email. And even then, it had the wrong date, so they retracted the email and sent a new one with the correct date.

No proper invitations were posted and emails were used instead for all occasions, including the gala dinner. Apparently, proper invitations had been printed, but for some reason – possibly a major error like that on the prime minister’s invitation to the CHOGM Business Forum dinner – these were not sent by post as normally happens on such occasions.

Despite the invitations being emailed out so late (and it would have been unacceptable anyway), the Maltese participants were informed that they had to go to the airport to collect their accreditation passes, which created a great deal of inconvenience.

The inauguration ceremony was painfully embarrassing. It opened with some singing by Mary Rose Mallia, looking like a shabby widow from a Sicilian mountain village, all dressed in black and wearing ugly boots, followed by another two singers who were better. But this was not the time or place for singers – it’s the ‘songfest’ mentality that tells them they can’t have an opening ceremony without singers.

The event had some funny moments, like when the presenter and the singers passed coloured strings from the stage to the back of the room, where the organisers were trying to hold on to them. This was so senseless.

The worst part was a large and lit-up message, which said YOU WANT TO BE FREE AT THE IDEA OF BEING A WOMAN (see photo below). It made even less sense than the coloured strings.

The following day, the proceedings opened with speeches, including one by Michelle Muscat, who was introduced as “the spouse of the Prime Minister”. It is ironic that in a women’s conference, she presents herself not for who she is, but who she has become through her husband.

The event not was well attended, with many chairs on the sides left unoccupied. By the afternoon, many people had left, as things were running horribly late. The speakers, only one of whom was Maltese, were good. I am sure they were suggested by the international CHOGM committee.

The only Maltese woman was Elvia George, who is the Chief Finance Office at the Bank of Valletta. She was put on a panel called Women’s Technology and Innovation, so her input had nothing to do with the the topic being discussed.

The second panel, on Women, Media and Communication, was moderated by Taghna Lkoll Carmen Sammut, who made a mess of it. When she called out the list of speakers she forgot to call Bola Olabisi who is the CEO, Global Women Investors and Innovators Network. Then she realised she had made a mistake and called her after the discussion had already started. To make matters worse, instead of adhering to the programme, she asked her to take the podium immediately, even if it was not her turn.

There were other embarrassing moments, for example when the slides Doreen Bogdan-Martin (Chief Strategic Planning of the International Telecommunications Union) wanted to show could not be uploaded and she had to ask them more than three times to sort it out, until finally they did so towards the end of her talk.

Similarly, when Jackie Leonard of the BBC World Service wanted to show some video clips, there was no sound and she had to ask them to replay each time this happened. I was fuming and wanted to crouch under the seat with embarrassment, but no one from the organisational side seemed bothered.

In this event no mention at all was made about women and disability. Similarly, no one spoke about how homosexual women are treated in many Commonwealth countries.

I did not attend any of the other events, because by then I had had enough. I was certainly not interested in being there on the second day to hear panelists like Alison Zerafa – Labour Mayor of Cospicua and sister of Labour Party executive secretary Lydia Abela – and Renee Laiviera, who typically addresses the audience as if they are infant school children.