This article is not about two persons who have died, nor about the friends and relatives who have died in this terrible heatwave of 2026, nor about Gorg Mallia either, whose sudden death shocked academia and so many friends besides.

It is about two persons who are still very much alive, personal friends from a long time back (and I hope they will still be after this article).

But two friends nevertheless whose potential to influence me has now definitely died.

This is the parting of the ways, at least as far as I am concerned. They are Philip Fenech and Prof. Rene Camilleri.

Both had opinion articles published over the weekend and I want to register my fundamental objection to both of them.

Rene contributed an article in which as an encomium he began by quoting from two poster models of progressive post-Conciliar Catholicism - Hannah Arendt and Thomas Merton, the Trappist priest killed by accident in a bathroom near Bangkok when he was electrocuted by a faulty electrical fan.

Rene would have been in better company had he quoted from Amos Oz's Judas.

He quotes Arendt to generalise on the yet unconcluded court case on the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. 

To me this is just the latest in a series of wrong directions that have spread the wrong message to whole generations of Maltese clergy, beginning with the focus on the financial reform of the Maltese church, then the succession of Archbishop Gonzi, then the Church school battle against Dom Mintoff which ended up in utter despondency. 

I was part and parcel of these successive campaigns. I am not speaking from any moral superiority. 

The second person I am publicly shaking off is the long-standing, self-appointed defender and promoter of the tourism industry that is focused on Paceville, Philip Fenech.

There he was last weekend preaching the benefits of the tourism industry for the community as a whole.

The most he could bring himself to admit was to urge the industry as a whole to become smarter and more efficient.

I urge readers to get out of their air-conditioned homes and go tour the new Malta that has sprouted up while they were slumbering - not just the area surrounding the Mercury skyscraper but also the under construction massive db monster and to try and imagine St George's Bay when it will be overshadowed by the new Villa Rosa behemoth and other copycat developments.

Where will traffic go, and how will infrastructure keep up with the pace of development? If driving through this area is already difficult how will it be when all these developments come on stream? If we have had so many power cuts any time the needle went up, how will it be when we'll be in a state of more or less permanent heatwave?

I am not blaming friend Philip for all this, of course, when successive administrations should be the ones to shoulder the blame.

But Philip and others like him have created and sustained the myth that unbridled tourism development is good for this tiny island and we should thank them for it and shut up.

As long as tourism development was restricted to the far corners of Malta, like Golden Bay etc it was acceptable, we thought. 

But now it is swamping us. And not even Comino is immune from overdevelopment.

The time for these past two friends to leave the national stage has come unless they have something new to tell. This country is over-ripe for a fundamental correction.

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