Public debate should at this time be focussing on the implications of Brexit for Malta and the Maltese, say, or on the country’s ranking in matters of rule of law and corruption, or on the survival of businesses. Instead it’s being diverted toward the blasphemies and credibility of the Minister responsible for destroying our countryside purportedly to ease traffic flow.

It’s true that Ian Borg has admirable personal attributes. He’s tall and handsome, clever and quick-witted, endowed with the gift of the gab and an excellent Maltese (except for his inability to pronounce the Maltese equivalent of “attributes” – it’s attributi, Minister, not attribjuti). In a sense, he’s the tall, dark version of Joseph Muscat. “Dark” not in the sense of evil, mind you, but in the literal sense: Muscat’s blonde, Dr Borg’s dark. And both play with words like children (used to) play with marbles.

If we want to be completely frank and honest about the charm of these people who remind you of snake oil salesmen, there’s a tendency in the common psychology to fall in love with narcissists. The more a narcissist is in love with himself, the more other people will ape him and fall in love with him.

Dr Borg, like Muscat before him, excels in this. Making the most of the public’s attraction to his charm, he then peddles inconsistencies with an agility that would elicit an antelope’s envy. But neither agility nor charm can conceal the fact that he’s trying to shove bovine manure down our throats.

Consider his argument on architects. Minister Borg seems to have made it the mission of his life to convert arable land into concrete pillars for flyovers and other assorted small-scale imitations of spaghetti junctions. One of these monstrous projects he’s planning for Msida.

The Chamber of Architects reacted by claiming that the project is a “mutilation” (a very strong word that the Chamber should consider explaining in more detail so that the public fully understands its implications and ramifications). The Chamber even argued – and I think they’re more than one hundred percent right – that Government Members see “this as a road engineering problem, so their solutions are road engineering ones. But this is an urban planning problem.”

How did Minister Borg react to the Chamber’s justified political concerns? Let’s analyse his argument.

Dr Borg argued that the architects working for his Ministry are as qualified as the architects who make up the Chamber. So why should he give more weight to the Chamber, when they’re all architects?

There you have it. A brilliant example of slick eloquence based on insincerity, glibness, and cynical manipulation.

It is self-evident that they are all architects, and nobody is questioning the professional abilities and competence of the architects working for the Minister’s Departments!

But the difference between the architects representing the Chamber and the architects working for the Minister is that the latter work for the Minister!

The architects working for the Minister have to carry out the instructions given to them by the Minister. They apply their professional expertise to implement his vision. Needless to say, one would expect them to advise the Minister (and his underlings), but the buck ultimately stops with the Minister! So, if the Minister poses a road engineering problem, his architects will give him road engineering technical solutions. Whereas the Chamber is saying that this is an urban planning problem!

Ian Borg – like his model, the disgraced and disgraceful Joseph Muscat – mixes concepts, and tries to get away with it like some real-life Dennis the Menace who seeks the last laugh. He confounds people by equating professional competence with political vision. In a Civil Service setting, one expects civil service staff not to engage in political activity and therefore not to partake in the political aspect of the running of the government apparatus. Civil service staff have to implement the instructions of the government of the day which – in theory, at least – should deliver what it promised the electorate. It’s the politician who’s responsible for the political aspect of government. Minister Borg threw a red herring – the professional competence of the architects working for his Department – to hide his own political incompetence. And it was this political incompetence that the Chamber of Architects brought to the public’s attention. The Chamber’s position is that the Minister’s political idea (that of passing a mutilating bypass through Msida) can be competently carried out by his Ministry’s/Departments’ architects, but politically makes no sense because it will ruin Msida for good.

Ian Borg tried to be funny with a Magistrate too, in a case that, I feel, hasn’t been properly analysed by the media. I’m referring to the acquisition of a field by Dr Borg, and the intelligently revealing comment passed by a Magistrate who openly said he couldn’t believe that, coming from the same small town, Dr Borg didn’t know that the man he acquired the field from had a certain type of problem. Now, I don’t feel quite at ease writing about such problems as I feel it’d be too intrusive on private citizens. But I’m sure this paper’s readers intuit and deduce what I’m leaving unsaid. Instead, what I want to underline is that Minister Borg’s answers to journalists were formulated in his habitual style, employing verbal trickery and cashing in on the interlocutor’s lack of legal knowledge, particularly in the field of legal mechanisms related to mental health in which problems don’t always appear overnight. Dr Borg’s answers to journalists were a brazen-faced attempt to pull the wool over the nation’s eyes.

You’ll note that this type of argumentation, this shamelessly arrogant and derogatory attitude toward the intelligence of the thinking public, is quite common among certain Labour politicians. But there’s something more that worries me when I analyse Ian Borg’s way of thinking. During the interview in which he mixed the professional expertise of architects with political responsibility, he also accidentally bared his political outlook. You’ll remember that he made it a point to stress that criticism won’t keep him from carrying out his plans (to convert arable land into concrete structures supporting flyovers).

It seems Dr Borg is not actually aware that we are in a democracy. And democracy implies, among other things, the participation of citizens in decision-making. Democracy doesn’t mean that every five years or so we elect dictators. Democracy means that we elect representatives who then govern in a democratic fashion, that is to say they engage in social dialogue, they listen to the people.

What is Ian Borg’s argument when he says that a little criticism here and a little criticism there won’t deter him from laying waste the little countryside we’ve left?

What is his argument? That the people should take up arms for the Government to listen to them?

Dr Borg seems to couch his political outlook as though the will of the politician has to triumph at all costs, no matter the resistance shown by citizens. In more ways than one, it is an arrogant outlook. But there’s to it than that. The macho belief in the triumph of the will is a characteristic trait of the typical strongman. The two loonies who ruled Germany and Italy a little less than a century ago, believed whole-heartedly in the triumph of the will, that the will of the politician should succeed in overcoming hurdles in the politician’s struggle to achieve his objectives. Not only. Italy’s Mussolini was also convinced that he enjoyed a wide consensus among the people. Compare that to Ian Borg’s remarks that many people approach him to tell him that thanks to his projects they’re spending less time on the road.

There he goes again, playing with words: people are spending less time on the road because there are less people on the road, as tourist numbers are at an all-time low and there’s pandemic-related tele-working. He’s also pushing a political outlook that recalls the dictators of a hundred years ago.

It’s good that Ian Borg spent his childhood running around fields (which in his adulthood he aspires to delete from Malta’s landscape) but I think that now he needs to attend a few lectures in political science.

New MP Scicluna

Another one who needs a little tutoring in political science is Oliver Scicluna, the man hand-picked by Prime Minister Abela to fill in Gavin Gulia’s place when Dr Gulia, apparently in deference to the PM, vacated the seat he had just been elected to after Edward Scicluna too had been apparently asked by the PM to vacate his seat. Given how Parliament has been transformed into a game of musical chairs, perhaps the PM should consider removing some orchestra conductor to take up the baton. Literally.

Despite his later comments that he would work beyond the special-needs sector, MP Scicluna’s first comments indicate that he saw himself as the representative of that sector. This was confirmed by an opinion piece written by somebody who knows him and made the argument that it’s good that the sector be represented in Parliament.

This type of reasoning is known as corporatism. “Corporatism” means that society is viewed as a spectrum of sectors and that the highest organs of the State should reflect those sectors. Salazar, the dictator of Portugal up till the early 1970s, governed his country in this way. However, it must be said that corporatism is accepted by different political ideologies and philosophies.

Except that it is not the model envisaged by our Constitution. According to our Constitution, representatives should be chosen according to geography not sectors of society. One might agree or disagree with the philosophy of our Constitution. But that is how the Constitution is at the moment. That the very first thing said by a new MP hand-picked by the Prime Minister runs counter to the Constitution to such a degree, once again demonstrates the political inadequacy of the Prime Minister.

Covid and mental health

I had written some months ago that I expected a rise in domestic violence because of the pandemic and its restrictions on personal freedoms, in particular the freedom of movement and the freedom to socialise. Newspapers have reported an increase of 16% in domestic violence cases during the pandemic.

I now expect that the pandemic will have an even bigger effect on mental health, in particular I expect to see an increase in depression and the attendant consequences of this mental condition. I hope I’m wrong, but I think that everything points at this direction. The population needs to brace itself. So do the medical professions and importers of pharmaceuticals. I hope the State puts in place measures to minimise these problems. The Church too has an important role to play in assisting people during psychologically taxing times.