At this time of the year, what happened during the so-called Great Siege often gets highlighted. The Siege was an extremely tough experience for the inhabitants of these islands. Mostly, the story gets told in terms befitting an epic of heroism, with the Knights of St John at the fore, usually with their names spelt out upfront, while the Maltese taking part feature as a rather anonymous crowd. Actually in the past, there were some critics who made the point that the Maltese were drawn for no reason at all into a quarrel that they had nothing to do with.
Whatever the truth is, over the centuries, the official (and popular) account remained focussed on the acts of war that were recorded. More information could have been added concerning the life of the Maltese inhabitants prior to, during and post the Great Siege. How did they live? What kind of economy prevailed? How was their community governed? What amusements, food did they share?
The truth is many of us know next to nothing about our ancestors. We call them Maltese because they happened to live here. But if we got to know more about their lives, would we recognize them as being our kith and kin?
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ENOUGH?
Agriculture is like mothehood: it gets universally praised and acknowledged as being so important. Still contrary to motherhood, the appreciation it gets does not go far.
The free trade in farm products imported from the rest of Europe brought about by Malta’s EU membership greatly weakened the economic foundations on which the agriculture of a small island could rely. The earnings of farmers, even if not always tiny, stayed by its very nature always precarious, and did not find an adequate alternative support. So, big stretches of land were left untended. Farmland was reduced further by construction projects and by the way it got turned into recreational sites.
We have not done enough to protect our agriculture and someday soon we shall hugely regret this mistake.
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CRISES IN AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEMS
A friend said: It’s true that as you wrote some days ago, parliamentary democracies encounter problems when they need to introduce radical but necessary reforms. True too that they end up postponing them till a crisis erupts and tough measures then need to be urgently pushed through, despite all the discontent that this provokes.
How worse though is the situation of countries run by authoritarian or dictatorial regimes? Needed changes are resisted unreservedly, especially if they affect negatively whoever is among those at the top in leadership position. Everything is done to rule out reforms. As the situation continues to worsen, the movement for change is rolled back, frequently with brutal means.
Till at the end, there is a social explosion with violence in the streets, a riot, a revolution, or call it what you will, indeed till the regime is bloodily overturned.
With all the problems thst a democracy faces, the big crises it experiences when the need for reforms arises, are preferable to those that emerge in authoritarian or dictatorial regimes.
This cannot be denied. In saying so, my friend was quite right.