The lethargic summer months seem to sanctify the somnolence of Mediterranean politics. In an island where time often stands still, and inertia is next of kin to paralysis, politicians, who struggle in defence of the status quo, long for a nap before going on holiday.

When they come back, they will be fit enough to man the dam that holds back the tide of progress.

Many a reader is likely to be taken aback by the foregoing, and will doubtless make a personal assessment of this affirmation. The proof of the pudding is in the eating,

The point I am trying to make is that, over time, Maltese party politics has been transformed into an exercise in sleight of hand and the electorate is involved in a game of Chinese mirrors. It is promised the earth plus pie in the sky. It is assured that the economy is steadily moving in the right direction. Electoral inebriation, stimulated at the right time, reaches such a pitch that unkept promises are forgotten, and new ones are introduced to sustain morale.

Ten years ago, at the end of a hot July, I tried to take the measure of this game of political illusion. Writing in this same newspaper, I described how the electorate had been taken for a long, long ride by the Maltese “Potemkin Syndrome”

Potemkin Villages

Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin (1739-1791) served Empress Catherine the Great of Russia in a number of capacities – as minister, counsellor, administrator and friend.

So concerned was he for her happiness, and also perhaps for his personal image, that he arranged for the empress to hear only good news from her subjects. He also wanted her to be pleased with his stewardship, obviously to make sure that his schemes would be officially endorsed.

He is reputed to have built phony pleasant villages along routes travelled by the empress. He saw to it that the villages where the empress had to stop were stocked with “happy” peasants.

Potemkin achieved certain immortality, thanks to his original device. The term “Potemkin village” has been assimilated into the language of political science to denote artificially contrived displays, where guile succeeds with the help of artificiality or even a degree of deception.

The temptation to build Potemkin villages has prevailed in a number of countries, including our own. The deception can come from governments and their agencies, as well as non-government quarters. Shakespeare summed it all up in Hamlet: “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain’.

Maltese Potemkin Constellation

Ten years ago, I pin-pointed various local Potemkin Villages which had served their purpose by l995. Some of them are still disfiguring our landscape, like ghosts from an ugly past. One of them is the old Chambray project, initially entrusted to an Italian-Malta Government enterprise, handed over to a Maltese quadrumvirate, and, subsequently, to Gozitan interests. It is still awaiting realisation.

Another Potemkin exercise on a grand scale was the Renzo Piano plan for the approaches to Valletta. It was touted as a million-liri project, designed to change the face of our capital city. Princely fees are said to have been spent so that a reputable local architect could undertake preliminary spadework. The Renzo Piano “village” seems to have vanished into thin air.

The remains of the former Royal Opera House stand, like an abandoned bride, at the entrance of our capital city, more than half a century after the end of World War Two. It embarrasses, even shames, the string of politicians who repeatedly undertook to restore it to its former glory, or at least to replace it .

The Planning Authority is proving to be yet another major star in the Maltese Potemkin constellation.

The Authority built its own head offices to cause a permanent scar on the aesthetics of the Floriana outer fortifications. The ceaseless wonders attributed to Mepa have been at the centre of national frustration and the focus of massive popular complaint, for which there seems to be no solution.

The so-called “reform” of the public transport service has been dangled before the eyes of the electorate in a succession of moves, by a succession of public entities – all of which took the nature of a cross between a public agency and a quango

Several fare increases have been authorised during the past 17 years, against solemn promises that the service would be improved.

The bus owners took the fare increases as well as some subsidies – but the service leaves much to be desired on many routes. The travelling public had been paying through the nose and has, in return, been taken for the proverbial ride. If one considers the intolerable overcrowding, the deplorable manners of many (but by no means all) the driving personnel and the inefficiency of meeting demand at peak hours, there is much to be desired, particularly in the light of Malta’s aspirations as an international tourist destination.

Maltese Incarnation

Perhaps the incarnation of Prince Potemkin in Malta is the Malta Civil Service. It has made big claims about modernisation and reform but the millions invested in revised pay scales have not been matched by all-round efficiency and productivity.

Although there has been time enough to send top civil servants for university training, there has been no tangible input at managerial level.

As a result, the country has operated by guess and by god, relying on hunches and calculations, plenty of rhetoric, at times, enhanced by Ministerial whims.

The machinery to collect arrears of revenue has been in a shambles and is showing no evidence of marked improvement. The government owes millions of liri to owners of expropriated property, to importers and contractors and never seems to learn to mend its ways.

But Ministers continue to be singularly adept at doing a Potemkin at the snap of their fingers. They publish glossy reports galore, and any number of annual reports, basking in the knowledge that they will be applauded by “happy peasants”, anxious to find favour with the empress.

That’s how the status quo prevails.

The more Potemkin villages

The more will time stand still

The more there is stagnation

The more there is frustration

Until the bluff is called.

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