Foreign media are being extremely hard on Malta. Most of what is written about us at present portrays us in the darkest hues available.

Which is serving to sustain the ongoing damage to the country’s reputation.

Since I’ve been keeping track of political goings-on, it’s not the first time that this has happened. I remember when we got called the Cuba of the Med or were seen as allies of Kim il Sung. Other polemics would arise about the Malta’s partisan and confrontational politics which according to media reports led to enormous street clashes between the forces of evil and those of the light. We would feature in articles and sensational programmes, factual or conjectural, highlighting corruption in the country.

The current polemic in the international media is the harshest one I can remember because it brings together all the elements or almost, that appeared separately in the media onslaughts of the past targeting Malta. I know that to many of us who live locally, what foreign media say or fail to say hardly seems to have any clear impact on our daily lives.

But it actually does, since a country which attracts a bad name internationally, ends up having difficulties to maintain the momentum of economic and social development.

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REPUBLIC

As we go forward, continuous action will be required to strengthen the structures that give direction to the Maltese republic. I remain of the belief that the institutions set up under the constitution have enough space and leverage to carry out the tasks for which they were designed.

However they needed to be operated and cared for with prudence and respect; as well as with good faith. Over decades, what arguably happened was that those whose duty it was to get them going, did so while mostly focussing on what made best sense from the perspective of their party’s best interests or their own personal ones. Given this emphasis, which kept spreading inch by inch and was carried over from government to government, the institutions slowly fossilized

A main challenge will be: how can we inject them with a real life that is accepted as genuine by all concerned?

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WE ARE FOOTBALL

I totally dislike the adverts that internet gaming companies put repeatedly on TV when football games are being transmitted from European countries. I imagine they have every right to sponsor such programmes. But I find the slogan that they push... “We are football”... as totally inappropriate.

It sounds like they’re telling us that football is not a sport but an invitation to gamble. The way I see it, these people are relegating football from a physical and competitive activity, a pleasant custom and a pasttime, to a competitive game by which to make money, which at its worst, can become a vicious addiction.

Some will consider that this is taking things too far. Yet, beyond how adverts get their message across, the way by which modern sport... not just football... has beome so dependent on the gaming industry for its financing risks subverting management of the game.