I realise that half the population has always considered Eddie Fenech Adami a “god” – after all, he delivered Malta from Mintoff and paved the way for an almost uninterrupted 25 years of Nationalist governments. What’s not to like…hmm?
When it was time for him to prise himself off the prime ministerial seat, he crowned himself President of Malta (to the dismay of his Mrs who was yearning to put away her hats and high heels and potter around comfortably in the garden instead). She was not the only one who sighed heavily – as this meant a further five years of seeing Eddie’s unsmiling face glowering at us whenever he had do something “presidential”.
The end of the “Eddie era” brought with it – inevitably – eulogies and tributes and biographies about his life, but after two weeks of being bombarded with images of Eddie through the ages, watching as his curls turned from brown to white, it was all starting to become a bit much.
The last straw came this week with a letter to the editor in The Times, which described him as “one of the precious gifts that God gives to Malta every now and again.” It ended with the words “Thank you Good Lord. Thank you Eddie.”
Good grief.
Maybe it’s because I have a personal loathing of putting anyone on a pedestal, but this kind of sycophantic grovelling gives me the shudders. That you admire someone I can understand, but that you practically elevate him to cult status or sainthood – I’m sorry, but no.
Let’s put all this into the context of the times. Basically, if it weren’t for the fact that the out-of-control Mintoff needed to be challenged by someone with a bit more mettle than the gentle George Borg Olivier, Eddie would not have managed to gain so much support. The more outrageous Mintoff’s policies became, the better Eddie started to look. End of story.
Of course, there will be those who will howl in outrage at this succinct description, but that’s really it in a nutshell. Eddie was simply in the right place at the right time – he filled a void at a time when many people were yearning for change, and he harnessed the anti-Mintoff sentiment into a vocal movement that grew into the powerful party the PN is today. So, endowing him with supernatural powers or with Messianic qualities, as in the above-mentioned letter, is really laying it on a bit thick.
And let us not forget how Eddie was eventually groomed and polished to fit the role he fought so hard for. Those early pictures from 1987 show a very ordinary looking, paunchy, middle-aged man wearing nondescript clothes – by the time he led the Nationalist Party to yet another victory in 1992 he had been given a slick marketing makeover.
I remember a time when, if you dared to criticise Mintoff, people looked at you in a funny way, so I find it pretty ironic that Eddie has been similarly endowed with this “untouchable” aura.
When columnist Joe Sammut (a former Labour party candidate) expressed exactly how he and many Labour supporters really feel about Eddie, the PN bizarrely demanded that Joseph Muscat should “condemn” what he wrote. How the tables have turned.
Let’s get a grip people – politicians are human beings like you and me; they are not infallible; they are not flawless. No one is above criticism and no one should be treated with such reverence and simpering awe – because, if we ever do end up with a dictatorship, then we would have no one to blame but ourselves.
Say you’re happy, or else
If criticising Eddie is asking for trouble then criticising the way we raise our children is like a red flag to a bull. Boy, are we touchy.
A recent survey entitled “Child Wellbeing and Child Poverty” covering all 27 EU member States plus Norway and Iceland, has concluded that Malta is the worst place to raise children. Predictably, the online comments were practically spluttering with rage and incredulity, with people speaking of their own rose-tinted childhoods and pointing fingers at all the teenagers stabbing each other in the UK.
Most of those who were ranting and raving completely missed the point of the study, which has to be read at source to be really understood.
Children were questioned on 43 different “indicators” ranging from health, poverty, education and behaviour to relationships and how youngsters felt about their lives. In other words, this was not about how parents felt they were raising the kids, but about the children themselves describing their lives.
As the report explains, “wellbeing” describes the quality of childhood not only in material terms, but also emotionally and psychologically. Parents are quick to boast that in 2009, “children have never had it so good”, but they are referring to the wealth of “things” an average child has today when compared to their own generation. Is this, however, a real indicator of a happy childhood?
Let’s take health – sure, children have all the food they can gobble up these days when compared to, say, the 1970s when there was a dearth of variety. Yet with affluence, a free market and the McDonaldisation of Malta, we have also been landed with the depressing honour of having the fattest kids in Europe who barely have enough energy to waddle from the school bus to their front door.
The “subjective wellbeing” question deals with how children feel about their lives, whether they like school and if they feel pressured by schoolwork. Are we really surprised that we rank at the bottom of this list? I would have questioned the validity of the survey had the children answered that they were happy at school, but ranking 28th out of 29th sounds just about right. I hope we are satisfied that we have made our children completely miserable just so that they can come first at the next school prize day.
When it comes to talking to their parents, Maltese children are ranked at number 21, and again I am not surprised. Parents are so busy, so tired, so stressed that they think they can simply throw money at children and this will replace any real time spent with them. Sensing this, kids become petulant, rude and obnoxious simply to get some attention from their distracted parents. Talking back (unheard of when I was growing up) is now considered precocious and cute, although it won’t be so cute when that child has to face the real world.
I often hear parents lament, “but I do everything for my kids; I give them everything they want, and I still get no respect.”
Perhaps that’s the clue to the problem right there.
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