The reports in yesterday’s newspapers that a breakthrough may be reached in the current dispute over the relocation of the Monti are most probably premature and over optimistic, sources involved in the issue said yesterday.

It seems that the two parties heading for tomorrow’s talks will abide by their well-known stands: the government adamant that it will not give in to the Monti hawkers opposition to the Monti’s relocation and the Monti hawkers equally objecting to the move.

Other than that, the issue of the relocation of the Monti from St James’ Ditch on weekdays to somewhere inside Valletta could be tackled and perhaps an agreement found, but the main issue will still remain. The hawkers want to relocate to Freedom Square while the roadworks in Merchants Street continue, but the government has been equally adamant that Freedom Square, as the entrance to the city, especially now that it has been cleared of the cars that used to choke it, is not the proper site to relocate the Monti to.

The GRTU had proposed the temporary use of St Christopher’s Street from Republic Street to Merchants Street and Merchants Street between St Christopher Street and the Valletta market, but this seems to have been rejected out of hand by the Monti hawkers and “their” union, the Union Haddiema Maghqudin.

Another alternative could be for the Monti to temporarily relocate to Ordnance Street all the way to the Finance Ministry in Old Mint Street, but this proposal, which could be acceptable to some of the sides involved, has still to be proposed.

Yesterday’s confusing reports in the newspapers about the contact between the Prime Minister and UHM’s Gejtu Vella only showed how even the smallest item of information can be manipulated to give a quite incorrect reading of the situation, for evident reasons.

One newspaper quoted a UHM official (Nicholas Baldacchino) as saying the phone call was made by Prime Minister Gonzi to UHM’s Gejtu Vella. Another newspaper said a meeting between the two had taken place. Neither is correct: the information reaching this newspaper is that it was Mr Vella who contacted the Prime Minister. Mr Vella was reported by sources to have pleaded with Dr Gonzi to give something and Dr Gonzi was reported to have replied that he would give “something”. This then led the UHM to issue a statement calling off the protest claiming there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Others think differently. It is a shocking sight, Vince Farrugia told this newspaper, for the country to see its Prime Minister engaged in futile negotiations with the Monti hawkers for three-and-a-half hours when he did not spend that much time with the Smart City developers.

Mr Farrugia added that if it was people out on the streets that get the Prime Minister to meet them, he would start doing exactly that.

An even bigger question is, how come the UHM is now defending the Monti hawkers?

Mr Farrugia said he is thinking of proposing to the GRTU central committee that it sets up a trade union and starts recruiting members.

GRTU has been defending the interests of the self-employed since 1976 and when the law was changed and an organisation could either support employers or the self-employed, the GRTU has always been considered as an employer organisation.

It was true, Mr Farrugia admitted, that with shop owners and Monti hawkers as its members, there could be some clashes inside the organisation but this was the only way to have a balanced approach to possible conflicts, rather than having the Monti hawkers hawk themselves to whoever could provide them with the more blinkered defence.

In reality, there has been an ongoing undeclared war between the Monti hawkers and the Merchants Street shop owners since the Monti hawkers continued to widen their space and hemmed in the shop fronts until no one could really shop. The Monti hawkers were also accused by shop owners of leaving the area, despite clean-ups, full of rubbish, and occasionally using the shop fronts and doors as their public convenience. And when a shop owner, Camilleri, raised these issues, his shop front mysteriously caught fire.

It is also complete nonsense, said GRTU members, what Mr Vella said that all cities in Europe have their open-air markets in their cores. Wherever pedestrianisation was introduced in Europe, the open-air markets were moved elsewhere. Nowhere in Europe does one still find open-air markets in the most central squares, near Parliament and in the most beautiful streets.

Nor is UHM a real defender of the self-employed, said GRTU sources. It was mainly at UHM’s insistence that the Tax Compliance Unit, the scourge of the self-employed, was set up. And Mr Vella himself had been quite scathing of Tony Zarb and the General Workers Union’s repeated marches, with the possible consequences of mayhem, in the Issa Bizzejjed times.

Does Mr Vella want Malta to become a nation of hawkers with their bancarelle? Did we join the EU to get that in all towns and at all times? Or does this make us look more like a town in Africa than in Europe?

Tackling the culture of illegality

But there is more and more to the issue.

This issue and controversy has as its centre the culture of illegality that is permitted in Malta and which has been tolerated for years on end.

The real issue is not the relocation of the Monti to further down Merchants Street but the accompanying fact that in their newly-relocated space the Monti hawkers will no longer be allowed to break the law, which states that hawkers in Valletta are allowed a space of 2.13 metres by 1.52 metres each and which they have enlarged to at least four times the size on average. They have been allowed to break the law with impunity for the past 18 years and no one has pulled them up on that.

But the government must be consistent. For if it says that Freedom Square cannot be turned into an open-air market, with legal hawkers in it, it cannot continue to turn a blind eye on the number of illegal hawkers just outside City Gate, nor the confusion and bedlam that greets visitors to Valletta.

And if the bakers’ carts say they have police permits to be there, who is to say that hawkers of intimate lingerie should not have permits as well?

Besides, UHM representing the Monti hawkers turns upside down all industrial relations logic and also explains GRTU’s outburst of the past days.

As a trade union, UHM is using trade union rhetoric in this issue but the issue is about the self-employed, not employees. It is trade union rhetoric, although even this is now somewhat passé in today’s world – to defend the ‘right to work’ of its employed members – but, by definition, the self-employed have no such right.

For, just to reason by absurdity, does UHM’s rhetoric mean that henceforth shop owners in a street which is being rebuilt by the government expect compensation for lost business? Or in case of a change in he traffic flow outside their shops? Or should the Merchants Street shop owners now join UHM and protest as well because of the roadworks in the street? And will UHM now recruit shop owners as part of its recruitment drive?

The Monti hawkers are not employees, but the union feels it is within its right to call sympathy strikes by other members, employees, because of the problem. Does this give the owners of three-star hotels, for instance, the right to go out on strike because of lack of tourists? This is what happens when the rhetoric of workers is applied to a business association.

In essence, ordering workers to strike makes sense as they are employed by someone else. But telling the Monti hawkers, as they were told last week, to keep their wares inside their vans and sell nothing as a form of protest, hurts only themselves and nobody else. Some of the Monti hawkers are quite well off and have up to four selling spaces, import their goods from Sicily like any other importer, and can well survive not selling for a week and more. But other Monti hawkers are very close to the breadline and not making any sales for even a week could deeply dent their pockets.