Dwejra rock: the government has taken leave of its senses, or is just desperate for the distraction

A rock arch – which in Malta, because of the paucity of natural attractions has the status of a village Venus – collapses, and the Maltese government snatches at the occasion to distract us from talk about corruption and its highly suspect deal with a Hardrock franchisee.

First, they call a press conference addressed by four cabinet ministers looking like tools because what people really want to hear is an explanation from geologists.

And now they have announced that they will “launch an international initiative” for ideas about what to do instead. Here’s an idea: just leave it. Rocks are eroded. Valleys are formed. Cliffs collapse. Mountains suffer landslides. Volcanoes erupt.

How in heaven’s name do these people think the islands on which we live were formed in the first place? How do they think that rock which collapsed got to look like an arch at all? It’s because it was eroded through the centre by the same wave action which now got rid of the rest of it.

They’re not going to rebuild it, the government said. Well, I should ruddy well hope not. You can’t “rebuild” something that wasn’t built in the first place.

At the press conference, we told that the government will consider: 1. leaving things as they are (what a jolly good idea), 2. pulling the pieces of rock out of the sea and exhibiting them (why?), 3. creating an “interpretation centre” (so that Ian Borg’s mates can set up a restaurant, no doubt, as they did on Dingli Cliffs, 4. recreate the thing artificially (the Popeye Village factor).

I sit here and I am astonished. Malta is being destroyed by “developers” in what is so obviously becoming a money-launder’s dream situation. In which other business can you so easily launder dirty money? And instead of focussing on everything that’s been taken from us by the avarice of man, we faff around rending our garments about one thing that was taken from us by nature as the conclusion to its ‘life’ cycle.

And nobody, of course, thinks to call out the Prime Minister and his stooge ministers on their hypocrisy in making all this fuss about a collapsed rock arch when they have handed a massive (for Malta) tract of coastal land at Zonqor Point to a Jordanian camel-trader who has almost certainly put money somebody’s way. And let’s not even get started on what Hardrock Silvio is planning to do with their kind assistance.