From Dr G. G. Debono

One can only assume from the contents of Daphne’s column “We want fights not projects” (TMIS, 1 February) that, unlike virtually every person who has expressed an opinion, she is in full agreement with excavating the hallowed grounds around St John’s Cathedral to create an underground bunker museum, and that she is also in favour of replacing Malta’s bombed opera house with our Parliament.

To make her point, it seems that, for some reason or other, she used the tactic of disparaging the opponents to what she inexplicably defends and therefore devoted her entire column to hiding behind insults aimed at those who are not in agreement with the currently proposed scheme – instead of competently defending her standpoint.

She accuses those who disagree with the current proposal of “arrogating to themselves the voice of authority over matters of which they know little or nothing” and here Daphne treads on thin ice. First of all, she herself repeatedly does exactly this, as she blatantly did some weeks ago when she pontificated a huge amount of arrant, uninformed nonsense about the uselessness of domestic solar water heaters in her Sunday column.

As a result, all the column amounted to was the verbal equivalent of throwing shoes at those who have the courage to speak out against the excavation in St John’s Square or against replacing the bombed opera house with a House of Parliament. To this end she puffed out her column with disagreeable generalisations, name-calling and the attribution of crude motives to her imagined adversaries of the establishment (for which, read NGOs) by means of her usual insular and insulting clichés. This included gratuitous disparagement of our local talent and cultural status – even going as far as referring to our actors as “a bunch of squalling amateur actors who fake American accents badly, and for whom I have no time and even less patience”.

Daphne’s dismal assessment of the public’s appreciation of the arts in Malta merely reveals how little substance there is in anything she says. While culture in Malta is indeed a “legacy of a bygone era”, contrary to Daphne’s bigoted remarks, it is flourishing as never before – to the extent that visitors from other culturally advanced countries are astonished at the vibrant cultural life in our little Malta. Basing observations on opera junkets like open air performances is not the way to go about trying to appear knowledgeable on these matters. To say that “Maltese theatre audiences are shrinking” shows how desperately out of touch Daphne is with the local art, music and culture scene. It seems as if she has never experienced a true stage opera in Malta. Had she been to an opera performance or two, she might have noticed that these are invariably played to packed houses and that patrons have to book weeks in advance to get a seat. Much the same applies to our classical concerts.

In the final analysis, there is nothing at all in Daphne’s wild assertions that have any bearing on the pivotal question of whether digging an underground museum beneath the doorstep of St John’s Cathedral would be harmful to the integrity of this jewel – if not to Valletta itself. Neither does she appear to have any idea of the true nature of the cultural scene in Malta. All this makes her ineligible to comment on such things as whether or not we need a concert hall instead of a House of Parliament.

Finally, what is particularly sad about Daphne’s article is how seriously she has got it all wrong. Daphne seems unaware that this is a democratic country where the will of the majority should be respected. Public involvement in controversial matters of national importance is the very stuff of democracy. Almost without exception, those who have spoken out are against digging around St John’s Cathedral. They are equally opposed to moving Parliament to the site of the bombed opera house and depriving Malta of an opera house.

A handful preferred restoration of the opera house to its original form but very few, if any, were opposed to having City Gate reconstructed according to Renzo Piano’s design. Contrary to what Daphne says, the very public involvement in national decisions she tries to deride is a completely new – and healthy – phenomenon in Malta. Gone are the days when people were afraid to make their voice heard for fear of reprisals. Thank goodness those days are over and we are becoming a mature democracy.

G. G. Debono

SLIEMA