The American peoples and nation have a very high regard for their generals and admirals. Everywhere you wander in the US you note myriad statues of generals and famous militiamen: some on horseback, others just striking a gallant pose, still others reclining. Every garden, park or town square has its own general, popularly edified demiurges who shaped their own country’s history.
At one point, however, you start to wonder whether it might turn out to be a bit too much and whether some other form of professional occupation or scientist or literary figure should be so edified for their role in shaping the nation. I mean there is Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, Thomas Edison, Pearl S. Buck, Mark Twain, Martin Luther King and even Oppenheimer, if you happen to be utilitarian in outlook, together with so many other figures that should occupy the top of a pedestal rather than just generals.
In Malta we have a similar obsession with politicians. Statues of politicians are sprouting up everywhere. We have the official prime-ministerial crop in Valletta, rightly so, as a tribute to former prime-ministers. There are several in The Mall gardens, as well. Then we have Lorry Sant in Paola, and Freddy Micallef in Mosta, with Agatha Barbara in Zabbar and a few others scattered around that escape my mind at the time of writing. Soon we might even have statues to mayors so that posterity might never forget they ever existed.
This obsession with all things political, however, has now reached absurd proportions with the intended launching of several plaques and statues (some supersize, maybe to match his then superego) of former Prime Minister and Labour Party leader, Dom Mintoff. From my latest count it seems there are five statues and/or plaques all over the island with seemingly many more to follow. It would be right to have a statue of Mintoff in Valletta or the Mall amongst former PMs as is his rightful place, but to bombard the islands with his effigy reminds me of the USA equivalent of the generals’ statues. Mintoff played his role in Maltese politics and as such should be honoured, but to elect him to the stature of a demiurge or demi-god by bombarding the island with his effigy is rather a bore at least and an insult to many of us, at most.
Many of us did not share Mintoff’s political ideas or penchant for using rough violence to attain political means. As with all persons, good he did do, but he would have done much more good if certain things he did, he had left undone. I have no intention of drawing up a list of all the things I disliked about him or over which I disagreed with both him and his ministers at the time, but were I to try, it would be a very long list and many of us who lived through those times would rather forget them, as they were not the most pleasant. I had my education in the 1970s and 1980s, so my memories of him and his ministers are not at all agreeable.
Some among us would, of course, elevate him to demi-god status for their own reasons, but it should be remembered that Mintoff was a very divisive figure in Maltese politics and I would rather that prudence won the day. The mentality of these people who insist on erecting so many statues of politicians is evidently neo-colonialist in outlook, as they insist on forcing things down peoples’ throats – a sort of cultural vandalism or illiteracy. Moderation in things political in Malta is often, unfortunately, not the norm. I suggest that these people set up the statues in their own back gardens so they may look at them to their heart’s content and rub their hands in glee till they are sore in their own privacy, without gracing us with the spectacle.
As in the US, there are so many other people that could be honoured in our piazzas and public gardens: poets, musicians, literary figures, patriots, singers and other professionals. There is also space for works of an artistic bent and imagination. Can we come up with something better than politicians to grace our roads? Politicians should be allowed to receive their reward for the good they have done in the other world! Can we not all grow up and allow others to get on with their lives?
To my mind, the best monument I have ever seen is the one to the architect who built St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The monument is manifest in the work of art itself. On the marble floor of the cathedral, underneath the central dome, lies an inscription in Latin: “SUBTUS CONDITUR HUIUS ECCLESIÆ ET VRBIS CONDITOR CHRISTOPHORUS WREN, QUI VIXIT ANNOS ULTRA NONAGINTA, NON SIBI SED BONO PUBLICO. LECTOR SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE Obijt XXV Feb: An: MDCCXXIII Æt: XCI”. The English translation of this reads: “Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond ninety years, not for his own profit but for the public good. Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you. Died 25 Feb. 1723, age 91”. May all our personal remembrances and monuments be made manifest in our deeds and the good we do, rather than in vain glory!
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