Yesterday’s demonstration was the first clear message to the Labour government that we can’t all be bought, threatened or cowed into submission. As pro-environment demonstrations go, this one was large – and more pertinently there was an air about it of generalised anger towards Joseph Muscat himself, as distinct from the government as a whole, because of his attitude.

It is not so much that Zonqor Point is going to be built on – though, obviously, that is a big issue. But the central issue, the unspoken one, appears to be the way it is being done, and the reasons why it is being done. It’s the secretiveness, the money-grubbing, the speculation, the stink of promises made in return for money donated, the suspicion of cuts and the stench of corruption – this is what upsets people far more than the destruction of that particular stretch of land. It was the subtext to almost every placard carried in the demonstration.

Had the government decided Malta should have another university, a proper one, and issued an international call for proposals and expressions of interest from existing universities which might be interested in setting up an overseas branch, would there have been this much anger? I’d say there would have been far less. People get worked up and motivated about land use, but not to this great extent. It’s the combination of anger at the despoliation of this stretch of coastal agricultural land with the fact that it is being given to a ‘friend of Joseph and the Labour Party’ from a country outside the European Union and with no democracy or system of checks and balances against corruption and bribery that has led to this explosive fury.

The people at the demonstration are quite obviously not the only ones who are preoccupied at the way this deal was done. Those people in Valletta were just the tip of a very large iceberg of growing perplexity at how we ended up like this in such a short span of time. For every businessman who says, in response to complaints about this abysmally poor governance, “But the economy is doing well,” there are several more people who know that it is perfectly possible for the economy to do well with corruption and abuse, and that corruption and abuse will keep the economy going well artificially, until crunch-point is reached as it did in Spain and Greece. And then it won’t be Sandro Chetcuti and Marco Gaffarena and Manuel Mallia and Joseph and Michelle Muscat and the people selling passports who will pay the price, but those who lose their job and have no financial cushion to live off.

Yesterday’s demonstration will also have taken a slice out of the insufferable arrogance of those Labour supporters who crowd the internet talking like it’s March 2013 and they have just scored a 36,000 majority. They are still going on about how fantastic ‘Joseph’ is and how almost everybody loves him while everyone else is just jealous or mad not to see his fine qualities. They sound increasingly disconnected from reality, but are obviously unaware of how out of touch they are with public sentiment – and this in such a short while. A few days ago I was sitting in a popular, civilised café in Valletta trying to ignore the uncivilised sound of a small crowd of braggarts two tables away. Even before I looked up, and without actually catching what they were talking about, I had worked out that they were Taghna Lkoll insiders. When I looked up from my newspaper, I confirmed it. They weren’t doing it for my benefit. The sound of them was already clearly audible and in full flood as I walked through the door. It was the sound of nobodies feeling they are important and that they own the place, the sound of nonentities who have derived temporal power from their connections to a group or individual. I struggled briefly to remember what the scene and the sound reminded me of, and then it came to me: the common sight of my teenage years and early 20s, of ‘drivers tal-ministri’ and assorted thugs and hangers-on, shooting the breeze in various doorways of government buildings in Valletta and certain coffee-shops including one in Sliema. One of the worst ‘we own the place’ coteries used to glue themselves to the doorway of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then as now in Merchants Street, presided over by Alex Sceberras Trigona’s driver. Sceberras Trigona was then Foreign Minister; now he is the prime minister’s special envoy to the World Trade Organisation. I saw this loud and reprehensible group of Look At Us We Are Connected To Power rubbish almost every day when I called at the main Post Office, which was then directly opposite, in the course of my work day.

Now they don’t hang about in the doorways of ministry buildings anymore – though Manuel Mallia did have that situation going on, making the Strait Street pavement there impassable. Now they have come up in the world, so they hang around in coffee-shops. But the sound is exactly the same, and the sight? Better clothes, better grooming, and now they’ve also got women with them. But they’re still…well, exactly what they are.

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