I happened to look at the government buildings that were once called Lintorn Barracks and later Belt is-Sebħ, or whatever it is called now.
There are two flagpoles on the roof… and both were flying the Maltese flag.
The two flagpoles were originally put up for the Maltese flag and the EU flag.
But someone, somewhere, is trying to redraw history. Not being able to get Malta out of the EU and the euro (not even Tsipras’ Syriza managed to do that, so far), the unnamed person in charge of the flagpoles on what I think is the Education Ministry, compromised by doing away with the EU flag and flying two Maltese flags next to each other.
It’s not an important detail and it’s not the only case. Next to the new Parliament there are two flagpoles, but only one flies a flag and that is the Maltese one. There also seem to be two flagpoles at the entrance to Valletta, but if they are flagpoles they remain flagless.
I do not know if the law says that the flag of Malta must have the EU flag next to it, but so is done on official events as well as in other EU member states. I surmise that it’s only when a messenger is charged with putting up the flags that his partisan feelings get the better of him.
Pity! Malta remains in the EU whether he likes or not. And it was the other party that got Malta in the EU and later in the euro. This unnamed messenger is free to try using the Lira.
If the above is as I have described it, it is only a part of a larger movement to do away with anything and everything the previous administration did, just because they were done by the Nationalist Party.
We had the case of the garden in Marsascala, which had just been opened by the PN and was declared to be unsafe by the new team, only to be reopened some time later.
In Valletta at the Upper Barrakka there is the lift. Whether on purpose or not, it was shut for quite some time because of unspecified damage. And I had remarked, even under the PN, there is a complete lack of signage leading to it, both down at harbour level and at the Upper Barrakka. Certainly I could see no ticket sale office at the top.
Around Valletta, especially in the upper reaches of Merchants Street, government cars park in the previously pedestrianized street. Monti owners crept along Merchants Street as if the pedestrianisation of the zone and the restaurant enclaves in the middle of the street did not exist.
It’s as if 2015 is back to 1998 and even to 1987.
We have had a wholesale cull of civil servants and top officials, the army and the police force. There is an argument to make for a normal turnover of political appointees when there is a change of government but what happened is something else. People of unquestioned loyalty and integrity as well as proven efficiency were swept aside, even when they were ready to work with the new administration, and their places taken by party loyalists. Let us say some of these are qualified and efficient but certainly not all. It is easy to see the signs of deterioration in public service efficiency.
Nobody, as far as I know, has ever made any argument why this was needed and how this helps national reconciliation and progress. On the contrary, all I seem to hear is that this is what brought Alfred Sant down, his insistence on keeping Nationalists at their post.
There is one area where the present government may, with some justification, claim that by reversing the previous government’s policies, it is doing better. This is in the energy sector.
I do not intend to downplay the many claims this government makes – that Enemalta was practically bankrupt, that there was a lot of corruption in fuel procurement and lax monitoring, that HFO is (maybe not cancerogenous) but nevertheless an old technology and gas is better. Maybe the biggest vote-catching gambit – reducing rates – may have been risky but it has been done and Enemalta has not collapsed.
On the other hand, we are faced with a work still in progress – the new power station is still under construction, Enemalta improved its financial gearing by selling a substantial part of it to the Chinese, Gasol has now been removed from being the lead partner of the new power station, etc. Thanks to the Interconnector we did not have any nation-wide power outage as we had last year, but the Prime Minister, maybe correctly, still blamed the former PN administration for not seeing to it that the distribution network is kept upgraded for the numerous power outages here and there as a result of the extreme heat.
But where what I call the pettiness unlimited is most virulent is, I feel, in public transport. The previous government brought in Arriva: it was a risky decision, wrongly implemented and the focus of national anger at the time. Ergo, come the new government and Arriva’s days were numbered, also due to buses catching fire, Arriva itself deciding to give up and cut its losses, as well as industrial action.
After a hiatus in which the employees became, as the famous l’orizzont heading had it, ‘Statali’, a new foreign company was hand-picked (the minister himself going on a fact-finding mission before the choice was made), and it is still in the process of settling in. The old buses made in China were replaced and augmented by buses made in Turkey.
And this is where it gets interesting: the new fare structure which has replaced the old one is far more complicated, and far more expensive; before, a day ticket cost €1.50 (€0.50 for the elderly), now a €2 ticket is only valid for two hours. And where previously the process involved the driver visually checking the tickets and giving a nod, it now involves pressing the card on to a gadget. People have said it is more laborious and lengthens, instead of cutting down, on the time spent at bus stops; apart from people without the card (quaintly named in Maltese, so that people from abroad do not understand) who have to pay the driver just as they used to do before.
But… as long as it is not Arriva, that’s OK, I suppose. Arriva had its faults, but it is part of a huge bus company which runs public transport in a number of countries, so it has experience and range.
I still see huge crowds on bus stops, especially in summer, and I also see a number of useless buses passing by on which no one ever seems to ride, those on the short inter-village routes no one seems to have the courage to stop. Getting the public transport up and running without proper consultation with the localities it serves was a mistake of the first order, but extending the service wherever the councils wanted is not far short from this initial mistake.
I am not saying the present government encourages this sort of attitude but it sort of condones it by not stamping down on all this silliness around.
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