He has tried to convince Labourites that he is the New Mintoff, or a reincarnation of him: a little psychological ploy that has so far paid handsome dividends.

Had he been a woman, it would not have worked. Apparently, science has established that women are at a disadvantage. A woman who seeks to be trusted with a job or an office needs to prove a solid track record; a man can get away with promises for the future.

So he was lucky from this point of view. He simply made promises, tons of them, on the fourth floor and elsewhere.

However, it is now becoming apparent to one and all that he is no New Mintoff. One might agree or disagree with Mintoff’s ideas and plans, but I think everyone can agree that Mintoff was of a different calibre. He is something else altogether.

In one thing alone he has surpassed Mintoff: grandiloquence directed at the less educated. He is better than Mintoff in impressing the uncouth. As to the other classes, I think they took Mintoff more seriously than they take him. He owes his success with these other classes to his laissez-faire, nonchalant attitude – clearly the ‘nonchalant’ qualifies the ‘laissez-faire’ as negative. His attitude is ‘let everybody do more or less what they want’; it is based on the ideology that ‘every man for himself (and the devil take the hindmost)’ – in Malta's case the ‘hindmost’ are those who are not ‘in business’ and have to pay the price for the profits of the few.

It is also becoming clear that there is actually no real plan – there is just a series of short-term leaps with all, but really all, fingers crossed.

Let’s consider the population issue.

Has a figure really been established to reflect the maximum population these two little islands can support? Has the breaking point – the point of no return – been defined and identified? If yes, what methodology was used? What measures have been – and are being – taken to avoid reaching breaking point? Has there been any cost analysis, not just in terms of the physical environment but also in terms of social cohesion, national identity and the overall manageability of the country.

On 31 July 2019, this newspaper’s sister paper reported that the Minister for Home Affairs and National Security had cautioned that Malta “is still in need of foreigners to take up job opportunities”, and “ways must be found to encourage legal migration, even from Africa”.

In other words, the plan is to keep increasing the islands’ population. This necessarily means that more virgin land will be taken up for infrastructural and residential projects, more buildings will be demolished for the erection of more soulless, badly-constructed blocks of flats, more roads will be widened for more cars to circulate the few square kilometres we inhabit, more trees will be chopped down to ease traffic congestion (!), more air pollution will ruin our lungs and noise pollution our serenity, more criminality from frustrated foreign males will increase social tensions and the brush of shabbiness won’t stop painting this entire country in opaque ugliness.

That’s not all. The symptoms of over-population will not be limited to the bigger island but, thanks to the proposed tunnel, will extend to the smaller one too. Everything will be engulfed in a mad bid to increase the population to enlarge the economy. And Malta and Gozo will be buried alive under the shadow not of the cypress trees but of blocks of apartments.

The economy might be growing but whether this is really accompanied by a just distribution of wealth is another story. A just distribution of wealth is Socialism’s strong point, but also one of the strong points of Christian Democracy. In this country, under this administration, we have neither Socialism nor Christian Democracy. We have an ultra liberal government that is happy to please the few at the expense of the many.

Worth his salt

A few days ago, businessman Frank Salt wrote an opinion piece elsewhere in the printed media, and I found a lot in it with which I agreed. Among the points raised by Mr Salt, I found a few I can repeat without hesitation: “Our economy is booming, but at the expense of Malta losing its identity. Since our islands are full of foreigners living and working here, there is much more wear and tear to our environment, especially in the urban sphere. The sad thing is that very little effort is made to address this problem, and so, our towns – especially those which are supposed to welcome our foreign visitors – are getting more and more unkempt and tatty looking.”

Malta is indeed becoming shabbier and shabbier – even small details. Consider for instance the floodlights that should light up Valletta’s bastions. If you have time, take a walk along the rocky coast round Fort St Elmo: you will see that the floodlights that once lit up the imposing walls of the city have disappeared. In their place, rusty pillars with uncovered (live?) wires dot the coastline at uneven intervals – a tangible memory of past, discontinued efforts to highlight the beauty of the fortifications.

The Best in Europe cannot even bring himself to carry out a proper upkeep of floodlights. Had he been the administrator of a block of flats, he would have been summarily fired by the flat-owners in no time. But he keeps impressing the uncouth and seducing the easily seduced, derailing the entire democratic mechanism in the process.

My personal library

This week I will not dwell on any book in particular, but will allow a sophisticated lady – a regular reader of this column – to inspire this Yellow Box Feature, as she called it when we met in Valletta this week and had a short conversation.

She told me that she has some documents at home dating back to the mid-20th century, which could be culturally valuable and was wondering what to do with them, because she needs to clear some space. My immediate reaction was to suggest a bequest – or donation – to the National Archives or the University or some other entity which might have the infrastructure and the motivation to take care of such documents while allowing researchers to use them for the cultural history of our country.

I kept mulling over this conversation. Probably there are others who, like this lady, happen to possess documents that are valuable in terms of their utility interest to the cultural and social history of our country. And it is possible that some of these people are uncertain as to what to do with them – be they original manuscripts or copies or other material.

So I decided that this week I would make an appeal to enable future books to be written, rather than to discuss a book that has already been written.

If you happen to own any documents or other media or material that could be culturally valuable and you do not wish to keep such items at home – for a number of reasons we need not enter into here – may I suggest that you approach any entity in the country that is dedicated to archiving? You might wish to consider the National Archives, the University of Malta, the National Library or other state entities. There are also the Cathedral Archives in Mdina and others either related to the Church or to private foundations or organisations.

Please do not throw away such materials. If they belong to a domain with which you are not familiar, please do get in touch with the experts. Many academics would simply fall in love with culturally valuable material and would be only too happy to help you identify the best place to which to donate or bequeath such items.

Our national identity and culture depend on the State only up to a point. From that point onward, they depend on us. Preserving culturally valuable items for posterity is one of the most beautiful and meaningful acts you can do for our country and for future generations: we owe it to those who will come after us.

Thanks.