According to recent media reports, “a study of Malta’s sewage system showed that about 10 grams of cocaine were flushed down the toilet every day”. Drug expert Godwin Sammut said he too had noted an increase in the substance in recent months.
And Prime Minister Muscat, in his New Year Message to the nation, claimed that ‘We can become the envy of the world’.
Insularity and peripherality
Apart from the linguistic errors which jar on the ears (for instance, legat to mean legacy, when the proper word in this context is wirt), the Prime Minister’s New Year Message was masterfully shot. The definition was superb and the camera pans were breath-taking. Does this mean that the message itself is exempt from panning?
By no means. The New Year Message was a masterful exercise in obfuscation and selectivity but mostly, hyperbole. The exaggerations were stomach-churning: making you end up with indigestion of gigantic proportions.
The problem is that the message was a professional con exercise, intended to take the people for a ride. Its deviousness and abuse of mass psychology should be the subject of in-depth analysis. Unfortunately, I have neither the space here, nor the methodological and professional preparation to carry out such an exercise.
This is something that the apposite organs of a well-organised Opposition would carry out, by engaging experts in the field to dissect the propaganda and explain how the Government is taking the electorate for a ride and making it, the electorate, foot the bill, to boot. At the moment, the Opposition is unfortunately experiencing a hiatus, which it would do well to get out of without further delay and ado.
In the meantime, the Prime Minister is surfeiting us with hyperbole. Had Malta really reached the level about which the Prime Minister is bragging, we would have succeeded in attracting a significant number of big names that have moved out of Britain (or intend doing so) because of Brexit. Instead, the vast majority have gone to Dublin or Frankfurt.
I want to zero in on transport by mentioning three points, all relating to the problems of insularity and peripherality, which the Prime Minister wants us to forget about as his administration seems either unaware of, or unable to solve, them.
Going to the airport
Despite all the hype, getting to the airport during the day, coming from the Ħal Qormi side, is nightmarish, to say the least. It’s a one-lane tributary flowing into a river of cars coming from the direction of the Freeport. The airport is the principal and only exit out of the Islands. Why is it such an agonising trip to get there?
Let us make a brief analysis by considering two angles: business and tourism.
For the tourist (be s/he outbound or inbound), the stress is more or less part of the adventure. You wake up early, you leave early, you get to the airport early, you are psychologically ready to wait, you are in relaxation mode – it’s all part of the experience. So a delay on your way to the airport is no big deal.
But if you are travelling on business, it's another story. And, do keep in mind that Joseph Muscat is all the time pitching about business business business (artificial intelligence, bitcoin, crypto-currency, and all this latest new-economy mumbo jumbo, as well as passport-selling and so on).
Let’s compare The Envy of the World Republic with two seriously efficient financial services jurisdictions: London and Luxembourg. In London, you take a small plane (a Bombardier, say) which, despite its dimensions, is exceptionally comfortable and you land at London City Airport. Ten minutes later you are on the DLR and a further 10 minutes later you’re in The City. No traffic jams, no stress, no nightmares. It's all extremely efficient and time-saving.
In Luxembourg, you land at Luxembourg International Airport, you either take a taxi and, 19 minutes later, you’re downtown or else you take the bus and, 20 minutes later, you stop at the tram station, take the tram and six more minutes later you’re in the commercial centre.
Now, the Envy of the World: you land at The Envy of the World International Airport and you take a taxi and get stuck in a traffic jam. Alternatively, you opt for public transport and it takes you forever to get anywhere. On your way out of The Envy of World, you get stuck in a traffic jam, finally get to the airport and board a Ryanair plane, with no leg space but fully aware that you will be getting the unforgettable Third-Class-Passenger experience.
Going to Sicily
Sicily is the closest land to us, yet getting there can be quite a financial and logistical challenge. I had a look at the Airmalta and Virtù Ferries websites the other day, to see what it takes to book two tickets for the following day. On Airmalta it would have cost €330 to spend one day in Catania; Virtù Ferries did not have the space for any more cars.
Now this is a problem related to insularity. For the Maltese, insularity is not a choice but an imposition. Apart from Cyprus, Malta is the only island-state in the Mediterranean, which means that other islanders have the choice of living on the mainland, should they wish to do so. Thanks to our history, we do not have that ‘luxury’: for us being islanders is not a choice, it’s an imposition.
On the mainland, and thanks to the Schengen Agreement, it is easy to jump into your car and drive elsewhere, with little or no planning. You just need to fill up the tank (incidentally it would cost less – Malta has the most expensive fuels in Europe), and drive. The Maltese cannot do that. They do not have the ‘luxury’ of going anywhere by car unless they plan the trip fairly well in advance. But it seems that the psychological limitations imposed by insularity are not a problem for The Envy of the World government.
Instead, the State is going to pay millions to dig a tunnel to connect the two islands making up The Envy of the World Republic, as if that can really solve the insularity problem.
The Muscat administration is going down the path inspired by greed rather than the path inspired by commonsense.
Going to Gozo
The digging of a tunnel between Malta and Gozo represents an irresponsible waste of public money. The more sensible solution would have been to liberalise sea transport between the two islands, creating a free market that would cater to the needs of the different types of demand. One could envisage a number of companies offering different types of services: from cargo transport, to high-speed transport, to high-class transport for people who don’t want the third-class-passenger experience.
Instead, the greed fuelling the present Envy of the World administration has dictated that public money be used for an impractical tunnel that will provide the raw material for the land reclamation folly which will benefit only a few private interests. Public money for private profit.
Were Joseph Muscat really interested in business, not merely in real estate business, he would liberalise the transport sector between the two islands (giving business opportunities to a lot of people) and dump the reclamation project which will only make a few rich people richer.
Stopping on Comino
This week TVM aired an excellent show on Comino, including an interview with one of the handful of people living there – the intelligent and practical Salvu Vella. My impression is that Mr Vella is right that when he says there should be at least two policemen, rather than one, serving on the Island. I felt that the reasoning put forward by Mr Vella hit the nail right on the head. But I found the interviewer’s dismissive reactions redundant... the presumptuous presumption that an interviewer’s knee-jerk reaction can have the same deliberative value as the reflections of a long-time resident baffles me. It is, however, symptomatic of the Maltese mentality: some (luckily, not all) journalists think they have become experts on everything simply by reason of being journalists.
TVM also interviewed an Ambjent Malta official who mentioned that a number of trees and shrubs have been planted on Comino. This is indeed good news. It also reminded me of something I read in Stanley Fiorini’s beautiful Documentary Sources of Maltese History Part 1, published in 1996. On Tuesday, 18 April 1486, Paulus Delia and Nicolaus Furra of Birgu appeared before Notary Giacomo Zabbara, together with Johannes Zurki, Prior of the Augustinian Friars of Rabat, and agreed that they would ‘carry on their boats and unload for him two thousand stacks of firewood from the Island of Comino, to a place on the shore near Mellieħa’. The prior agreed ‘to pay them at the rate of 7 tareni pro cantaro supplemented with an amount of wheat and barley... The firewood [was] needed to feed a lime kiln.”
In other words, Comino was once covered in woodland. Perhaps that would be a worthwhile project: returning wildlife to Comino by replanting a Mediterranean wood on the Island.
My personal library (35)
The 15-volume series Documentary Sources of Maltese History, edited by Stanley Fiorini and published by the University of Malta, is a collection that should grace everybody’s shelves. I particularly like the very first instalment, the deeds published by Notary Giacomo Zabbara between 1486 and 1488 (which I have already quoted above), because they switch on the light in the dark room of life in late 15th-century Malta. You read the deeds and you find real people living real lives, engaging in sales, donations and other business, but mostly you can see a real society unfolding in front of your eyes. I think that what Professor Fiorini has done for Malta deserves a lot of praise.