While licking its wounds and finding its bearings, the Opposition cannot stop being vigilant.

One thing every decent citizen of this country expects from the Opposition is to step up its criticism of the Government. Not by being a vigilante, but by being vigilant.

And keeping its eye on the ball.

One way of achieving this is by supporting the Ombudsman and his officials in their continuous uphill struggle to evolve the dominant culture of this country from “half-Hollywood, half-Baghdad” (as an anonymous member of a stand-up comedy show audience recently defined us) to “fully European”.

We don’t become “fully European” by embracing the dream of perpetual juvenile freedom from responsibility but by embracing the fundamental philosophical notion that the State is there for the Citizen, and not vice versa.

This is the great cultural war the people of Europe have been fighting since at least 1789. It was a cultural war against Absolutism first, and Totalitarianism later.

The war against Absolutism was won during the long 19th century, with the important revolutions that took place all over Europe, when European peoples demanded real sovereignty because the State does not belong to the élites but to the People.

The war against Totalitarianism – which expected individuals to sacrifice their interests for the benefit of the State – was won in two steps, first in 1945, then in 1989. Whereas the second victory was cemented in our Marsaxlokk Bay, we Maltese were given a medal in April 1942 (but no Marshall Aid money) for our gallant contribution to the first.

We can shove that medal up our collective rectum if we don’t understand that the State is there to serve the People – not to serve incumbent office-holders and their friends. This is the cowboy-land the Malta Chamber referred to a few days ago, and they are absolutely right.

It’s the same message you read between the lines in the Ombudsman’s reports tabled on the mythical Mejda tal-Kamra. Opposition MPs need to pick up those reports from that Mejda and study them. Then they need to start vociferously criticising the Government for not implementing the recommendations made by the Ombudsman and his officials.

The country doesn’t need an Opposition that dreams of emulating the American Democrats. The Country needs an Opposition that dreams of Europeanising the dominant mentality, to emancipate this Country from the legacy (eredità not legat in Maltese) of colonialism and to join at long last the 21st century. We don’t need Woke culture; what we need is to wake up from our national slumber and embrace the culture of the State as servant to the Citizen. Sovereignty belongs to the People – to all the People, whether they have friends in power or not.

But it’s also the culture of treating the Citizen with respect: avoidance of arbitrary on-the-spot decisions, consistency in the application of laws and regulations, and a tangible effort to achieve efficiency.

From Caiaphas to Pilate

We have this picturesque saying in Maltese: “to send from Caiaphas to Pilate”, which I think is a variation on the Italian “mandare da Erode a Pilato” (“to send from Herod to Pilate”): send somebody who needs to solve a problem from one authority to another, making that person waste their time in a futile quest for information and advice.

This is what happened a couple of days ago to the European prosecutor who was unable to identify who is responsible in Malta to investigate, prosecute and bring to judgment fraud and similar crimes.

This is a serious matter. It’s true that nature abhors a vacuum, but the vacuum should not be filled by an Opposition that believes it has to play the vigilante role. The Opposition’s role is to put pressure on the Government to actually task somebody with the important function of weeding out fraud and similar crimes. Not only, but to give them resources and, most importantly, security of tenure. Coupled with harsh penalties for malfeasance.

The Opposition’s role is to be vigilant and ensure that the Government performs its duties properly.

Ray Azzopardi

I sincerely hope that whoever vandalised Ray Azzopardi’s residence is caught and punished.

I have known Mr Azzopardi for 39 years and I have only two words to describe him: a “real gentleman”. Ray belongs to that very rare species of people who go out of their way – willingly and intelligently – to help others.

I was saddened to learn that some moron vandalised his residence. But I feel I can reassure Ray that whereas there is probably one sad moron who views him negatively, those who hold him in high esteem are legion.

My Personal Video Library (32)

I am torn between two movies this week.

Earlier this year, a 1969 film called Hoffman and starring Peter Sellers and the beauteous Sinéad Cusack, was released on Blu-Ray. It’s a bit of a fantasy movie, in the sense that it narrates the (secret?) fantasy of many a middle-aged man: that of making a woman in her early 20s fall in love with them. The main character, Mr Hoffman, blackmails a 21-year-old colleague into spending one week with him at his home, hoping that, through a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, she will eventually fall in love with him.

The lucky victim of this quest is played by Sinéad Cusack, whose eyes have that innocent look she inherited from her father Cyril Cusack. The first movie I watched with Cyril Cusack starring in it was Giuseppe Colizzi’s Più Forte Ragazzi! (1972), with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, in which Cusack plays Il Matto (“The Madman”), a role he was given probably because of the look in those blue eyes of his which gave the impression he had never fallen from Paradise. Sinéad Cusack’s eyes endowed her Miss Smith with that same quality, even though Miss Smith is a naughty girl and she calls Mr Hoffman “mad”.

During the shooting of the movie, the 44-year-old Sellers had a brief but intense off-screen affair with the Irish actress half his age. But when the shooting was over, he experienced a depressive episode and insisted on buying the movie’s negatives to have the movie shot again. It seems he wasn’t so much embarrassed by the story (in 1969 it ran into trouble with the censors) but by the fact that the character he played was too close to who he was in real life, even though – so say his contemporaries – he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge it.

The movie was not a success at the box office, but that’s no deterrent to considering it a minor masterpiece. It’s a rare movie in which Sellers – best known for portraying Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series – plays a serious role, even though it’s in a movie with a plot that’s nothing short of being a somewhat silly fantasy.

Perhaps, that was Sellers’ life in a nutshell. Perhaps, that’s the life of each and every one of us in a nutshell. Perhaps, we all play serious roles in a somewhat silly plot, and that’s probably why this movie, like all fantasies, is so comforting.

In many instances throughout this movie, Sellers’ mannerisms reminded me of one particular Maltese politician.

The other movie I referred to in the opening, is the 2021 Franco-Belgian movie Délicieux, starring Grégory Gadebois and Isabelle Carré.

Here I must admit, having reached middle age and looking back at my life so far, that I now realise that from my travels I have brought back only two types of memories: bookshops and restaurants. When I think of the places I have visited, my memories of public buildings, monuments, and museums get blurred – but I can associate at least one good (second-hand) bookshop and one good restaurant with each city and town I’ve been to, and even which books I bought and which food I ate. You will obviously understand why I like Montalbán’s Pepe Carvalho and Camilleri’s Montalbano.

Anyway, so Délicieux will probably become one of my favourite movies of all time – it narrates the history of the founding of the very first restaurant!

The story takes place on the eve of the 1789 French Great Revolution and the birth of the first restaurant is used as a metaphor for the equality championed by the Revolution.

A brilliant cook is fired by the Duke he works for. He’s being punished for having had the audacity to propose a potato-and-truffle amuse-bouche, which humiliated the Duke in front of his friends who consider anything that grows underground to be good only for pigs.

(The movie is replete with such subtle, ironic wit. In the later phases of the Ancien Régime, the nobility had degenerated to such a degree that adultery and sodomy had become aristocratic fads, and their châteaux housed private (or “underground”) theatres where pornographic plays were regularly staged. One of the meanings of cochonnerie – “pig-like thing” (ħniżrija) – is “obscenity”.)

The cook then goes through a series of (mis)adventures, including mentoring a mysterious lady who could be either a former prostitute or a former noblewoman, that lead him to opening the very first restaurant in France, where every client is treated like a Duke, or a King even. It is the dawn of a new era.

But political undertones aren’t this movie’s strong point. No, its most beautiful aspect is the amalgamation of the shots’ robust composition with Jean-Marie Dreujou’s breath-taking photography. The movie is not a series of moving pictures but a series of moving paintings – almost each shot is an exquisite exercise in natura morta, landscapes, chiaroscuro portraits, and genre scenes, all inspired by the works of the great French painter Jean Siméon Chardin (1699–1779). The photography by itself is enough to make this movie worth… savouring.

But while the composition of the scenes and the photography seduce the eye, the food – though one cannot actually smell, taste, or touch it – satisfies three other senses by proxy, and the music – though admittedly lacking in élan – still succeeds in pleasing the ear.

All in all, it’s a feast for the five senses – as one would expect from a dinner at any restaurant where you’re treated like a Duke. Or a King.