I'm repeatedly confirming that reading about a politician's speech as reported by the media is one thing; hearing it from the politician's mouth is something else altogether. The media can serve as a colour filter.

Last Sunday, I attended the PN activity in Birkirkara. The media highlighted Bernard Grech's promise to change the rules so that people get paid for electricity produced by their solar panels at the same rate as the electricity they buy from the State supplier.

But that was just one of the points he made; there were others that stood out. At least, in my eye.

At this stage of Dr Grech's political career, people want to get to know him and what he stands for, and what he wants the Maltese to stand for. His speeches offer us a fantastic opportunity. And the more you listen, the more you realise that he's endowed with tremendous charisma.

I was standing next to my friend Nationalist MP Ryan Callus and he observed me while I kept jotting down notes. I told him, "Dr Grech's speech is peppered with titbits here and there that should be recorded. He's sharing his vision in instalments, and it's a captivating vision." Ryan asked me if I'd be using them for my article, to which I said "Yes". Yes because – unlike Robert Abela, whose political vision remains virtually unknown – Bernard Grech is fleshing his out, Sunday after Sunday.

One passage from Dr Grech' speech last Sunday that struck me especially was when argued that it doesn't matter who caused the damage; what matters is how it's going to be remedied. He was realistically taking stock of the past, sincerely and matter-of-factly, offering a strategy for the future. He elaborated: it's no longer time to play reds and blues. When things go to the dogs, everybody feels the pinch. It's time to work toward the national interest. These are the words of a leader.

When I look at Bernard Grech I see a man whose face shows he knows life. I see an adult who's gone through life working hard for his family, caring for them, and striving for the right values. When I think of this man, I envisage him singing with his son - that image carries within it so many messages: family values, care, a deeply-rooted sense of parental duty married to parental love. But, as I said, I also see in him a man who has worked hard, and who's guided by a principle that he himself conveyed to his audience last Sunday: "Tomorrow can be better".

The present crisis won't be short-lived. The country needs Bernard Grech's kind of leadership. Not empty slogans about "business as usual" and "the waves are in the sea" but meaningful words of courage, wisdom, and vision, that acknowledge reality, in a mature and adult way: today we're going through hard times, but tomorrow can be better. 

During the week...

... I did two interesting things I'd like to share with readers.

First, I spent two mornings doing research, at the National Library and at the National Archives, where the staff is extraordinarily helpful. I've done research abroad over the years – at the British Library and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and elsewhere, in Italy, Germany, Luxembourg – but I've rarely encountered the courtesy and the will to go beyond the call of duty that I constantly encounter in Malta. Truth be told, I found the same kind of courtesy in the French Midi, close to Marseille. I was looking for Vassalli's children's birth registry entries and a gentleman at a small Commune was so helpful (despite my defective French). That was when – for the great delectation of the nineteenth-century positivists among us – I discovered documents proving that Caterina Formosa de Fremeaux was Vassalli's common-law wife.

Anyway, at the National Library and the National Archives you get silver service. But at the Library there's an annoying pump or similar contraption that utterly disrupts your concentration. In libraries abroad, you're afraid even of breathing: the movements of your diaphragm could be heard and disturb the readers. In Malta, the staff goes the extra mile but then there's a pump humming, books disappear and are never replaced, and so on. Will the Minister in charge of the Library see to it that some sort of sound proofing be put in place and that books that have gone missing over the years are somehow replaced?

The national situation is this: whereas most staff members are usually polite and sincerely helpful, management seems not to have a clue. I surmise it's a legacy (eredità in Maltese, not legat) of colonialism, when decisions were taken by the Foreign Adult. The Maltese need to grow into that role and fulfil it adequately. But the process needs time.

Muscat's deranged government, guided by so-called civil rights and the primacy of ego-centred entitlements, thwarted the march toward mental decolonisation. Like the average teenager, Muscat mistook growing up for doing whatever crosses your mind. In many ways, Muscat's political world-view was child-like – but the world-view of an evil child – rights rights rights and no duties. On the other hand, the incumbent has a childish world-view. Unlike his predecessor, Dr Abela is not evil, but his approach is childish, he's like a child who hasn't figured out where he wants to take the country. The way I see it is that Muscat is a spoilt child (and therefore evil); Dr Abela is a pampered child (and therefore disoriented).

The country needs mature men and women at the helm, not children.

The other thing I did this week was to testify before the Board of Inquiry on the possible role of the State in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

I declared on oath that, between 2008 and 2010, Joseph Muscat asked Frans Sammut (who passed away in May 2011) to write or contribute to an anonymous blog meant to denigrate Daphne Caruana Galizia. My father, who publicly displayed his dislike of her writings, refused, because he reckoned it went against his principles.

The reactions to my sworn declaration have been mixed. Some people have posted comments saying they understood the pressures Frans Sammut had been through. They don't know that my father had been hugely impressed during his childhood and early youth by three spinster aunts who were members of St Ġorġ Preca's MUSEUM Society. This explains why he wrote a biography of the Maltese saint. It would also explain his monograph On The Da Vinci Code, written and published 15 years ago, in Maltese and English. Oliver Friggieri had written him a letter, which my father kept in the topmost drawer of his desk, in which the late Professor told him that he wept when he read that monograph, because it so touched him.

Labourites reacted in two ways. The intelligent ones were cautious, as they worked out that I wouldn't lie and that my father wouldn't lie when he told me about the incident. Yet they cannot come to terms with the banality of Muscat's evil.

Then there were the idiots who actually think that I lied. But then, they fail to understand Joseph Muscat's own reaction. Some people have drawn my attention to the fact that he didn't deny my statement, he simply said I was "not correct". I smiled. Because I didn't lie and because I was absolutely correct in what I testified, and Muscat knows it. Muscat had asked my father to create or participate in an anonymous blog meant to attack Daphne Carauana Galizia and my father had the temerity to say "No". To the Spoilt Child who would one day be King, I mean Prime Minister.

Construction and prostitution

The Maltese are beginning to feel the fatigue. There's the pandemic going on, with all the hardship it's causing the nation and the stress that keeps piling up.

But the nation's also experiencing fatigue from too much construction all over the place. Hydraulic jiggers break rock, dust particles accumulate in lungs, people fear for their lives in their homes. High-rise buildings deprive neighbours of sunlight and cause mould to grow indoors on walls and render solar panels on roofs useless.

But what's worse, there seems to be no long-term plan for the construction industry. It seems we're doomed to more demolition and more construction of ugly, soulless cuboids.

There's even more fatigue with the liberal-progressive madness inherited from Joseph Muscat's pact with the devil. Take Rosianne Cutajar's job. She's been tasked with carrying out Pledge 17 (found on page 159) of the Labour Party's 2017 electoral manifesto. I don't know if she's doing it with gusto, but it seems she's putting her heart into insisting that "sex work should be seen as a legitimate job choice".

But look at Labour's logic. The pledge was to "launch a debate on the regularisation and decriminalisation of prostitution" ("Inniedu wkoll dibattitu dwar ir-regolarizzazjoni u d-dekriminalizzazjoni tal-prostituzzjoni", from the 2017 manifesto). For Parliamentary Secretary Cutajar "launch a debate" seems to mean "Let's do it. Now!"

I wonder how many Labourite women realise that they voted for the "regolarizzazzjoni tal-prostituzzjoni". This could be an interesting survey for Malta Toady and other assorted bootlickers.

This prostitution fixation – that sounds so foolish in these days of social distancing – seems so progressive and liberal while in reality it's just a return to the nineteenth century, when the colonial authorities monitored prostitutes to make sure that "service providers" weren't infecting British soldiers with debilitating or even deadly STDs.

People are getting tired of the anarchy masquerading as liberalism. Too much demolition of outmoded (but sound) buildings, too much demolition of outmoded (but sound) mores.

I'm still waiting...

... for a serious debate in the country on the real significance of Brexit for Malta and the Maltese.

Instead, we're getting a Conference on National Unity! The fixation on national unity – one people, one nation, one leader – belongs to dictatorships. Already we have seen signs of corporatism (MP Oliver Scicluna's debut in politics was coloured by this theme) and signs of absolutism (the Prime-Minister-King appointing Ministers and MPs while bypassing the will expressed by the voters on the ballot-sheet)... and now we get national unity.

And you would have thought that at this point things could only get better...

Maltese Quirks (10)

For the attention of the Minister responsible for the notarial profession.

Dear Minister, article 2, Chapter 55, Laws of Malta speaks of "atti ta' notorietà". Please amend it, it's "notorjetà". Equally important, "att ta' notorjetà" is not "act of notoriety" in English but "sworn declaration in lieu of affidavit". "Notoriety" is when you're famous for something bad; "notorjetà" is when something is (made) publicly known.

You're in politics, Minister: you should know that the world is full of false friends.