My scribbling colleague at l-orizzont, John Agius, who is now responsible for the paper’s highly-informative weekly parliamentary double page, last week gently posed a series of searching questions in connection with the attendance, or not, of our MPs during sessions of the House of Representatives they are paid – and assured of a generous pension – to participate in.

John’s journalistic curiosity was tweaked by what seems to have become a habitual mass evacuation from the House soon after the 30-minute duration of Question Time. It is a pattern that apparently transcends administrations and ideologies. He described how, at the very instant the first item on the agenda comes to an end a sizeable number of MPs, as if choreographed, always stand up in unison and, while exchanging some quick words with nearby fellow honourable members on both sides of the House, quickly shuffle out of the chamber.

He happened to be going out of The Palace one day when this “exodus” occurred. He noticed that not only did the exiting MPs trigger the poor duty soldier into switching to a non-stop saluting mode, as they were so many of them, but they all seemed intent on reaching their destination as quickly as possible. Some went to the right and some to the left, quite obviously to find their cars in their privileged parking slots. Where did they go? Parliament had only just started meeting, after all.

The issue of MPs’ attendance at parliamentary sessions was brought up several times during the January-to-March election campaign. There had been disquieting cases of elected representatives simply absenting themselves completely or leaving soon after Question Time while still getting their full remuneration, and this when the GonziPN administration had a wafer-thin majority, so much so it is now an open secret that on one occasion even the secret service had to be used to frog-march a dissenting MP from his family home to vote with the government. 

When Labour leader Joseph Muscat declared he would be tackling the issue if elected, we all applauded. Except for Lawrence Gonzi who said the Labour leader was suggesting parliamentarians should be treated like schoolchildren. It is why it no longer makes sense to keep on wondering why and how Gonzi and his band of merry men ended up losing so heavily.

The situation as it has developed, however, with the new Labour government enjoying a large and comfortable majority in the House, makes things easier for those MPs who do not seem too devoted to their parliamentary responsibilities. It is still early days, of course, and certainly the right time for someone to clip their wings and to let MPs know the game is over. If Parliament is not a classroom, it is also not an exclusive gentlemen’s club.

The onus mainly falls on Mr Speaker, Dr Anglu Farrugia, who, I am sure, cannot be happy with this state of affairs. Working people everywhere are paid strictly for the hours they work. It should not be any different in the case of our MPs. Mr Speaker needs to stop the rot and keep MPs on their toes – before the House eventually moves to its new premises, that sore thumb of a building pushed down the throat of Europe’s newly-declared cultural capital.

Just ban them

Suddenly last week, someone chose to float a huge and ugly advertisement in the middle of Spinola Bay, selling the production of “inflatable billboards”. My logic tells me – correct me if I’m wrong – that the absurd idea is to have these inflatable billboards “adorning” our bays and inlets during the summer months. All in the name of the god of free market, of course.

Billboards have certainly marred and scarred our major thoroughfares, are we now going to be crazy enough to let them hound us from across the water? Malta is too small for such insane initiatives. The land-based billboards already effectively contaminate the urban and, in several cases, country environments. Putting them afloat in our bays and inlets would mean the last over-done smudge of gaudy make-up on the face of an island that has very few such picturesque places it can ill afford to lose.

The solution is one: just ban them.

Post scriptum: the recent high winds ended up overturning the Spinola advert. Must be some celestial message...

Genoa and my grandpa

One subplot to the sad story of the horrendous human tragedy that occurred at the port of Genoa in Italy, where seven people died instantly and six went missing, later also found dead, after a container ship smashed into a control tower, brought back to my mind a no less sad episode during World War II involving my paternal grandpa, Duminku, who of course I never knew, having been solicited from the heavens years after the war had ended.

It transpired that one of the Genoa victims had actually gone to work when it was not his shift. He had earlier accepted to do a colleague of his the favour of exchanging duties, as people who work shifts often do... and that was that.

As a child and later as a curious teenager, I was often told the story of how on 8 April 1941 my grandpa had died, with the rest of the crew except for one member, when the MV Moor exploded at the entrance of Grand Harbour after hitting a German mine that had somehow avoided the highly secure breakwater filter. Nannu was not supposed to be on duty on that fateful day, but a colleague had asked him to take his place on that doomed shift. The survivor of course was unable to repay the gesture, but it was thanks to his efforts many years later that the tragedy was eventually recorded on a plaque at the Upper Barrakka.

What has always irked me about this family tragedy is that my Grandma Lorenza, Nanna Wenz to us, had to face a long wartime existence and its aftermath with no less than seven children to feed. The George Cross, which we still naively display on our national flag, hardly helped her, nor did the paltry annual contribution she received from the Poppy collection fund.

So I cannot be blamed for refusing to wax lyrical every time the Poppy appeal comes around, year after year. I know that those who make it are genuine in their desire to help the families and relatives of soldiers and seamen who lost their lives fighting somebody else’s wars, but somehow I have always found it hollow and unfulfilling.