As a seasoned media person I really should have expected it, more so in light of the current “spoiled child” mood of a certain section of the local media. Whether this negativity is all associated with incredibly obvious political agendas or simply borne out of utter frustration from the fact that the American University project seems to have finally found its Malta home, it came as quite a surprise to me that my role in the Cottonera Rehabilitation Committee should take precedence over the welcome news that the Dock No.1 zone in Bormla is to host a significant part of that university’s campus.
Well-meaning journalists are supposed to be able to handle their priorities better; otherwise they’d just be handy instruments that form part of whichever machines get them going. Rather than coming to me to ask what I, as chairman of a committee that has, over many years and not just since March 2013 been involved in a lot of rehabilitation work in the Three Cities and Kalkara, thought of the news of giving Bormla and the rest of the Cottonera the chance to enter a new phase in the regeneration of the region, they merely wanted to know whether I had been consulted over the decision.
Oh shucks, where was I during the whole process, I asked myself after talking to journalists who were all ears to hear what I had to say about the consultation business, but seemed to suddenly lose interest when I elaborated on the work of the committee and its earlier proposals for the Dock No.1 area. You could feel the instant drop of temperature in your ears over the telephone line.
There was a sense of boredom when I tried to explain how the committee had come up with several proposals which were submitted to the ministry that appointed us on how to best utilise the area and other sites crying out loud for rehabilitation. Of course we can only recommend, because it is obvious that the government will always have its national priorities to consider. The journalists at the other end of the line were polite enough not to ring off while I serenaded about all this, but you could feel they wanted to. After all, they were only after one pre-determined news point.
They knew they could hardly question the decision to utilise the Dock No.1 site for part of the AUM project, as the reaction everywhere and from everyone was understandably positive. The people of Bormla were rightly elated. Here we are talking about a community that has, for far too long, been subjected to complete social isolation and a cruel stigma that persists to this day. The AUM project will give it back its soul from both a cultural and commercial point of view.
The rest of the Cottonera will also reap the fruit of that decision. Infrastructure will have to be improved; the restaurants and shops as well as real estate people and the new boutique hotels will have a steady supply of clients, both local and foreign. But more important, the young men and women of Bormla, Birgu, Isla and Kalkara will have better opportunities in the employment and education sectors.
One hears rumours and reads innuendos here and there as to why all this concentration, one even used the word fuss, on the Cottonera. Some even intimated it was “unfair” as it was denying the rest of the Maltese Islands the chance to savour some of the AUM benefits. All gobbledegook, of course, about the South and the Cottonera when one remembers that Gozo – can’t go more up north than that in the Maltese archipelago – was earlier accorded the Barth University project which, likewise, will continue to help in the sister island’s social and economic revival.
Oh shucks, I took the point, colleagues, but you now know where I was.
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The other lot
I vividly remember the first real oil crisis in the mid-70s. My wife and I were honeymooning in London where, as a result, we were denied the Piccadilly Circus light spectacle. Thank goodness we had other things to do in mind! I also remember my late and then editorial colleague, Frederick Muscat, who had close journalistic ties with Gaddafi’s Libya, insisting, in his down-to-earth logic, that the West would no doubt one day take revenge for the havoc caused by the oil-rich OPEC nations that had stifled most of the world’s energy resources.
There have been so many full circles on the issue since then that I have lost count. What is certain is that oil, the lifeblood of countries that produce and sell it, now appears to be rapidly turning into an ever-cheaper economic curse. Not for the rest, of course, the other lot who depend on oil for their energy and industrial needs. A year ago, the international price per barrel of oil was about $103. By last Monday, the price was about $42, roughly six per cent lower than on the Friday.
Now reports are surfacing, from Venezuela to Iraq and Russia, which express fears of unrest as oil prices drop to even lower levels. In oil-rich Iraq, for example, where an Islamic State insurgency and fractious sectarian politics are other growing threats, a new source of instability erupted this month with violent protests over the government’s failure to provide reliable electricity and explain what has been done with all the promised petroleum money.
In Russia, another leading oil producer, consumers are now paying far more for imports, largely because of their currency’s plummeting value. In Nigeria and Venezuela, which rely almost completely on oil exports, fears of unrest and economic instability are also building. In Ecuador, where oil revenue has fallen by nearly half since last year, tens of thousands of demonstrators pour into the streets every week, angered by the government’s economic policies.
The other lot cannot be too perturbed by these events, as long as they get their share of the black gold. Nations that have to supply electricity to huge communities and gargantuan industries cannot be losing any sleep. They did when oil supplies were denied merely on political and ideological grounds by many of these nations that now find their commodity has become cheaper as their revenue continues to plunge.
The free market has its many fallacies, but it sometimes comes up with a juicy piece of justice.
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Killing the messenger
We’ve had our fair share of controversies about whistleblowers and, recently, even political spies, but we should not for a single moment think it is solely a Maltese trait.
Reports from arch-conservative Australia say that Gold Coast police officer Sergeant Rick Flori may spend up to seven years behind bars for leaking CCTV footage showing his fellow officers brutalizing a handcuffed young chef in a police station basement.
Flori, who leaked the dramatic footage to a Brisbane newspaper, was formally charged with misconduct in public office after being summoned to Police Headquarters last week. The 2012 footage shows police officers slamming the young chef's face into the concrete floor before being shoved into the back of a van and brutally punched a number of times by one cop while another held him.
The video then shows the victim's blood being routinely washed away by a senior sergeant who later quit the force before any adverse findings were made by internal investigators. The senior constable who threw the punches was only given a suspended dismissal, while two other officers involved were reportedly not disciplined at all.
Flori, who had spent 25 years in the Queensland police force, committed the so-called offence by “inappropriately obtaining” confidential surveillance footage from the police CCTV room. It was certainly a case of killing the messenger for the message not to be delivered.
“How is it that the police who were shown on the video as belting the crap out of this particular person have not been charged and yet the person who has leaked it is now being charged with an offence which could put him in jail?” many in the Australian council for civil liberties have been asking since then.
Rings a not so distant political bell for us, doesn’t it? Many still remember the poor guy who went with a special message to a Prime Minister at Castille and ended up being the ultimate victim.