The sudden shift in the psyche of our government is truly amazing. It actually confirms why people voted so massively for a change in direction and style in March of last year. From a government which insisted, much to everyone’s wonderment, that it was run by a bunch of infallible popes, we suddenly have a government which makes it clear, much to everyone’s endorsement, that it does not claim to be perfect.

This long-awaited way of thinking is certainly appreciated by people who think of politicians as mere human beings, very much like you and me. History shows perfect governments, headed by perfect prime ministers, very rarely leave a perfectly clean slate behind them, and it is for those who come after them to do the sweeping and the soaking, if they can suffer the stench, and clear the mud and the dirt. The Busuttil direct orders are just one of these putrid leftovers we have belatedly come to know about.

One year on from this dramatic change, we are just about to start enjoying the fruit of a major electoral pledge – reduced utility bills. The perfect gentlemen of just over a year ago had labelled that very same pledge “Alice in Wonderland”. Earlier this week, though, some of them chose to watch first-hand the Mepa approval show, but while it turned out to be a pleasant “Welcome home, Alice” musical for most of those who attended, it must have been more of a Rocky Horror experience for them.

Allegories apart, reduced water and electricity bills will mean only one thing: a much-desired respite for families who had, for far too long, been unfairly paying inflated energy prices while all those fishy goings-on, feebly referred to as commissions, were taking place at Enemalta. It is remarkable what a difference one single year has done to this national corporation. With the stroke of a pen, its huge debts have been halved. It is now well on its way to supplying our energy needs by making use of a cleaner, more efficient fuel, and has even found the time to shed the cancerous skin of corruption that had enveloped it over the past two decades.

To use a bit more of Alice jargon, it is now “down the rabbit hole” for those perfect ladies and gentlemen of yesteryear. I just hope they make sure to come back up clean.

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Bilingualism as an excuse

We have always had a “language question”, even if we have often conveniently swept it under the carpet ever since Maltese became formally recognised – for it was always so – as the national language and so to be used at all official functions and inside the Law Courts. A minority that has always found it difficult to belong with the rest, out of social and/or infantile snobbishness, perhaps, or a distorted view of their own identity, persists in the use of English (it used to be Italian before the Mussolini bombs of WWII) as do a good section of monkeys from the majority desperately trying to imitate them but in the process only rendering themselves ridiculous.

The trendy excuse is bilingualism. So we now have newspapers in Maltese publishing adverts in English (including those from EU institutions where Maltese is supposedly an official language!) and radio and TV stations airing adverts in English and even Italian, with PBS, the national voice of a secular state, now markedly serving as a Vatican relay station. How horrific can it get?

We’ve also had ministers and public officers sometimes speaking publicly against a background of English-only pop-ups and billboards, and most of the public places have English-only signposting and directions. Ironically, the excuse is always “bilingualism”.

Bilingualism, it seems, works solely against the use of the Maltese language. If we truly are a bilingual nation, which I sometimes doubt, then both languages in use need to be represented on a level playing-field, i.e. everywhere and on everything. If there are English-speaking locals who do not understand Maltese, there are also Maltese-speaking individuals who do not exactly get it in English. As I see it, bilingualism has to mean two languages treated fairly and in the same way. If one is used at the expense or to the detriment of the other, then it’s not bilingualism that we are talking about, but a linguistic overthrow.

Inevitably, if boringly, I have to insist that one’s support of the national language does not in any way mean the denigration of another language, in our case English, as the major linguistic tool in the world today. But if we are to insist on bilingualism, then let’s make sure we are fair and just.

So far it has been an irksome process of ignoring the Maltese language by way of opting for English, then when someone, some organisation, protests, the bilingualism excuse is quickly brought up. Those who insist on it have found that the old excuse of “we have two official languages” is no longer convincing enough. Why? Because we only have one national language.

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Incomprehensible world

We voted in a national referendum to join the European Union. It was more or less a question of deciding our own future. The people of Kosovo had voted in a referendum to pluck themselves out of Serbia, and so decided their future. The people of the Falkland Islands, which the Argentineans have traditionally known for centuries as the Malvinas, voted in a referendum to retain British rule, and so decided their future.

These and so many other landmark decisions have been taken the world over, often to the rapturous applause of the Western (ex-colonial) powers that still believe they have the divine right to police the world.

Then suddenly, when the people of Crimea, after the recent fascist-led coup d’état in Kiev, voted to leave Ukraine and re-join Russia, there are sanctions imposed and military threats from those very same powers and their lackeys in the European Union.

This has become an incomprehensible world – or has it always been like this?

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Long-overdue rights

Maltese authors, in whichever language they write, and their publishers know the limitations of their market. It is small, saturated and unforgiving. Still, we have a thriving publishing sector that, per capita, must be one of the highest in the world.

Certainly no harm in that, but if it is readers and more readers we need, then authors also need to know that they have their rights protected. The question of authors’ rights has not been a happy one. There have been, and still are, too many stories of authors being denied payments, royalties and even contracts, their works lifted and used liberally in text books by profit-seeking individuals with the right contacts, and other unprofessional and unethical attitudes and tactics.

Happily, there is a new awareness of the importance of authors’ rights. The National Book Council, for example, which many erroneously think is only involved with the annual book festival every November, has recently been working on the issue of Public Lending Rights – long-overdue rights whereby authors whose works are borrowed from public libraries receive proper remuneration.

Many people prefer borrowing books from a library to buying them, alas, which means the already limited sales of locally-produced books become, well, even more limited. It is an unfair situation that will happily be rectified soon.