There has been an understandable outcry against how the Maltese Church station, RTK, was left helplessly exposed to be usurped by a group of acknowledged Nationalist sympathisers for the station to instantly become part of an obvious, albeit eventually rendered unconvincing, Opposition propaganda machine during the general election campaign. The coup was so blatant it quickly had people twiddling with the station’s identification, RTK, transforming it from Radju Ta’ Kulħadd and/orRadju Tal-Knisja into Radju Tal-Konfużjoni given it had turned into such a loud mouthpiece for the PN’s ill-fated coalition of confusion with the PD.
Mark Montebello, theintellectualfiery Dominican who has never been known to mince words when dealing with politics and politicians of whichever colour or shade, was perhaps the most vociferous voice of protest against RTK’s sudden shedding of its traditional role as a voice for the average listener, the moderate Catholic critic and the down-to-earth neutral. He called the brusque change “disgusting and shameful”.
Montebello belongs to that vast majority of people on these islands who insists that the Church should stay out of local politics, as should all her institutions which obviously cater for and are assisted by people of different political beliefs. He rightly insisted that whenever the Church has interfered with Maltese political life it has shot itself in the foot and shoved society into a traumatic state.
There are those who may think that it is “he who pays the piper that calls the tune”, and if the Church wants certain people in her radio station, no one is to begrudge her that right. No one of course did, and the whole exercise ended in a massive electoral fiasco for RTK’s new darlings. But is it a situation the Church should be in? Converting its station into a Nationalist instrument was certainly a bad idea, a view shared by most people and, no doubt, a good section of its ownclergy.
It’s ok for the trigger-happy Archbishop to play John Wayne on Twitter, but stripping RTK of its long-established independent perspective is another thing. It’s the faithful who throughout the years havepropped the station up... the faithful who belong to a variety of political creeds.
***
Flagpenchant
Given our widespread penchant for all sorts of flags flying from the rooftops, I was amused recently to stumble on a story of how a family in Denmark was asked by police to remove a US flag from their garden or else pay a hefty fine. It seems neighbours had complained, with one saying he felt provoked by the flag.
The Hedegard family in the town of Kolding, who say they are keen on American “culture”, not surprisingly said they were puzzled by the complaints over the flag since it is not “a Nazi or ISIS flag”. However, there is a 100-year-old Danish ban on flying foreign flags. The ban followed a 1915 law which prohibited the flying of national flags other than the Dannebrog, the Danish national flag, with exceptions being made for the flags of Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the EU and the Nordic flags of Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland. It almost reminds you of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The Maltese skyline is often enlivened by flying foreign flags, mostly at households with a history of emigration. Returned pensioners from Australia, the US, and Canada often fly the flags for nostalgia’s sake. In Gozo, especially, the flag flying habit is practically de rigueur, and as frequent as the home names that refer to places in the lands where a future had been carved until retirement and a return to the mother country.
I see absolutely no problem with that, but I am still curious enough to ask whether flying foreign flags is illegal or not in Malta. Just to know.
***
Book-shy nation?
My old friend from the Sixties’ poetic boom, Judge Philip Sciberras, a couple of weeks ago lamented on social media that a recent survey’s findings revealed that only a minority of Maltese actually read books. He remarked that culture is not just the colourful festa with its band marches, citing Matthew Arnold’s famous quote: "Culture is indispensably necessary, and culture is reading; but reading with a purpose to guide it, and with a system. He does a good work who does anything to help this; indeed it is the one essential service now to be rendered to education".
Philip Sciberras rightly appealed for an even greater effort to improve awareness on the need of books and the beauty and relevance of reading to avoid turning our children and grandchildren into robots playing with gadgets.
It is fair to state, however, that several initiatives on the issue have been taken by both the Education authorities and the National Book Council. Hopefully, future surveys will provide better results. There is no lack of good books on the market, even in the Maltese Language sector. My last pleasant read was Lawrence Gatt’s “Il-Qlugħ l-Aħmar”, a collection of 31 short stories that go down well with a glass of good red on a balmy summer evening...
***
Shocking
Remember the horrendous action of those few blockheads some time ago when they chose to organise a public barbeque, piglet, bacon and all, on the Msida seafront, exactly on the spot where members of the Maltese Islamic community had been allowed to pray on a Friday evening? It was as shocking as the decision to issue the permit for the prayer service to take place in the middle of a traffic-congested open space in the shadow of a big Catholic church. An agreement to find an alternative place was soon reached and the nitwits had no more cause for their misguided merriment.
It is small consolation however, that one finds such nincompooperyoccurs everywhere. In Canada recently, a shocking video was posted on social media of a mother’s racist rant at a walk-in clinic. It showed stunned staff and patients trying to deal with her incredible demand to see a “white doctor who doesn’t have brown teeth and speaks English”.
When this insipid woman was told no white doctors were on duty that day, she asked a staff member: “What type of horrible country do I live in?” Then added: “Being white in this country I should just shoot myself.”
If she only did.