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Karl Schembri
Shocked by cultural vandalism? According to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, the Maltese should rebel against attacks on our national identity and the senseless destruction of our cultural heritage.
But our identity is being constantly stolen, threatened and traded, without much of a popular rebellion, and messages from the political leadership have not been very consistent over the last few years.
To Gonzi’s credit, massive restoration projects of fortifications and key heritage sites are currently underway, somehow raising more public awareness about the great national treasures surrounding us in contrast with his predecessor’s plans to open a rubbish dump next to the prehistoric Mnajdra temples.
But insensitivity towards the priceless cultural heritage trickles down from the country’s leadership. It is manifested in the incompetent decisions of the past, the abysmal lack of security that permitted looters to rob the nation of some of its most important artefacts, and the general sense of helplessness of some of the people in authority.
As the former President of Din L-Art Helwa, Martin Scicluna, once said, “Our education must start with our political leaders … with a few notable exceptions, they have been derelict in their duty toward our cultural heritage. They pay only lip service to it.”
Just the idea of proposing landfills right next to the site where vandals destroyed Mnajdra, to a public outrage, says a lot about the ‘sensitivity’ of people in government.
It was not a one-off. When the Xaghra local council insisted with its idiotic proposal to open a sports complex in front of the Ggantija temple – the oldest free-standing building on earth – back in 2001, then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami did not provide much support to heritage NGOs calling for his commitment against the project. He told them their uproar was “a storm in a teacup”. Eventually Cabinet turned it down.
In the same year, a rare 18 century painting by Giuseppe Grech of Grand Master de Rohan was stolen from the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta. To this date, the painting remains missing and nobody is rebelling.
The same museum had two antique marble angels dating back to the Knights’ period stolen mysteriously, one in 1998 and its twin statue in 2000. The museum authorities had kept all these thefts under wraps until they were revealed by the media.
“We’re making sure that no such cases ever repeat themselves,” a culture ministry spokesman had said, “although in a sense we are lucky that despite the lack of security no other exhibits were stolen.”
If that was luck, it did not last long. Last year, a moon rock donated by US President Richard Nixon in 1973 to the Maltese people was stolen from the National Museum of Natural History in Mdina.
There were no surveillance cameras and no custodians at the Museum of Natural History because of insufficient funding. The only attendant was the ticket-seller.
In the meantime Maltese dealers are trafficking national heritage artefacts on the internet. The Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, Anthony Pace, knows about it but says he does not have enough staff to monitor the sales, much less to track down the dealers. It seems there are no rebels in his department.
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