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The village that has become my home is no different to the other small towns that collectively make up what we once called Central Malta. Naxxar is not unique, it is as dirty and neglected as everywhere else.
When you have spent some time abroad, the general abandonment, the litter, the rubble, the dust, the crumbling walls and the shabby pavements are more than just eyesores.
Naxxar is like any other place, only that it is run by a Mayor whom they call Fatima. And Fatima has sure left her mark.
Facing the local council offices, a derelict field is to be found. Its walls are falling over, debris rises by the steep sides and vermin can be seen at night roaming around.
Next to the council, Fatima has laid out exaggeratedly spacious private parking slots making it very clear that the parking is reserved for the local council, whatever that may mean.
Just imagine the thousand of civil servants enjoying the same parking privileges.
The Fatima parking signs, as I like to call them, make it known that from 7am until 9pm only the Naxxar Royal family can park. Even though I have never seen a local council official arrive at his or her office at 7am.
The morons and residents who live in the same street have to park kilometres away, but the suffering Fatima and some, not all, of her councillors, need a private parking slot because it appears that some of them can only walk four metres and apparently after that they drop dead at the main door.
Some people think Naxxar is a special place. Shops with a licence to operate until 7pm keep their doors open until whenever they please, and if you report them, the police think that you are a pest. Cars drive up wrong way past the police station and a band club in St Lucy Street blocks the road whenever it pleases with street parties until the early hours of the night.
And no one raises a finger of protest, because they are scared of suffering recriminations.
When the feast of tal-Vittorja is held, the band clubs, there are two, take the brass bands for a stroll around the streets for a fortnight and private residents are asked to remove their cars. And we are supposed to say, ‘E how nice!’
There are no speed cameras in Naxxar like in most towns in urban Europe. The Maltese speed cameras are traditionally only found on hills or busy roads where pedestrians are not expected to be cross roads. Or just before tunnels where you are expected to slow down and take your car for a walk.
Like all other busy towns, motorists race their cars through Naxxar and no one is there to stop them.
My next door neighbour knows exactly what it means. The elderly woman was hit by a car in the middle of the night. And yes, she is no longer living in Naxxar but in some other world with the real Fatimas.
In my view some Fatima-like candidates consider local councils as trampolines for the bigger world of politics.
The local councils run by political parties are a joke and they need to be challenged by independent candidates. The doctors, lawyers and party activists who are elected on a party ticket need to be replaced by independent candidates who love their community and despise private parking slots.
Alfred Sant has said that he will not position human rights before economic considerations.
It is a comment that you would expect from an obese pensioner with a literacy problem sipping sweetened tea in a Maltese bar.
I cannot understand why he says such things. Every time I start to kind of like the man he utters something so stupid that I have to drive all the way to Dwejra Tower which has been surrounded illegally by the Water Services Corporation by hideous chicken wire and scream at the top of my voice things that cannot be printed here.
This country needs a political change, this country needs a new face, but it does not need to hear such dim-witted opinions.
The reign of every 17-year-old government is up for change.
But Alfred Sant cannot expect us to call him in to fill the void if he continues with these banalities.
If that was not enough, this week he met the Monsignors in Victoria, Gozo, and promised them the development of a parking lot at the Citadel.
How can he do this?
Are the Monsignors’ votes so important?
It is not difficult for Sant to be trite, and as we try to forget, summer comes to an abrupt end and he starts all over again.
It is not only Alfred Sant who makes the most unacceptable statements. Other politicians such as Tonio Borg and Tony Abela are stiff competitors and possible winners of the Oscars for the most unbelievable utterances.
Which convinces us that at the very end of the day it is not a case of ideology but whether one tribe replaces the other.
There is nothing socialist about Sant and nothing conservative about Tonio Borg. They are simply Maltese. Islanders as the good old cynics would say.
They both express a genuine interest in promoting the status quo.
The only good reason for not re-electing the Nationalists is because democracy is all about alternating power.
And because at the very end of the day there is a limit to how many people can be defranchised.
Some readers complain that what I write is contributing to the demise of the Nationalists and giving a helping hand to the Labourites.
My answer to that is, so what?
But it is silly to continue believing in such a thing.
The Nationalist have an innate ability to lose votes so every morning they pray that Labour stays as is.
But replacing Alfred Sant with Michael Falzon would be really a case of the Labour party jumping from the frying pan into the fire. God forbid.
This not the first time this column has talked about the Americanisation of Maltese politics. Maltese politicians follow American habits when it comes to appointing people.
Take a cursory look at the ambassadors representing Malta, they are in their vast majority Nationalist stooges. But it does not stop there. The many reps of Maltese nationally owned companies such as Air Malta and the MTA are mostly individuals close to the Nationalist party.
I could publish their names here. But it would take too much space.
Perhaps I should.
Then we come to the chairmen and the board members on the innumerable parastatal companies. They too are all personalities who have extended their allegiance to the party.
It does not stop here.
The senior management of many branches in government are strongly weighed against one group of individuals. And then of course the secretariats of all the ministries are the usual faithful gladiators that have never asked themselves why they turn all green whenever one mentions the opposition.
Every politician knows that one of the surest ways of getting elected is offering something concrete and plausible to their constituents. The best bet is a job or a promotion.
In the days of old it used to be a telephone, a TV or a plot.
There are some ministries who have been doing this for ages.
No one is complaining.
Not even the Labourites who expect their turn to come when and if their party gets elected.
Air Malta is our national airline, that is before Austin G has it his way and sells it.
But there is nothing to be proud of when you fly on your airline.
The food is lousy, there are no newspapers, the booze is not free, the seating is so cramped you pray to do away with your limbs and the morale of the cabin crew is so low that you want to reach out and embrace them before they start to cry.
What is worse?
Do not order an electronic ticket and hope to pick it up from an airport, because Air Malta has hardly anyone to represent them.
Last Sunday was a case in point.
Paris to Malta is a lucrative flight schedule for Malta. But the ticketing office is leased to a foreign company called ServisAir. A cost cutting company that French sources told me pay their staff a pittance and have such a high staff turnover that they are renowned for their awful service.
So you can imagine my reaction when I discovered that there was no one to access the computer programme to issue the tickets. I was told the girl who is usually there was on vacation.
Frantic calls to Malta followed, to the great delight of the mobile company that will soon be privatised. Until as the good Maltese say, Alla habbni, and I was fortunate enough to pick out Air Malta’s PRO roaming around Orly.
Minutes later, Air Malta’s man in Paris was explaining in ‘his French’ to a man at a check-in to bypass the computer and issue the electronic tickets.
In the cramped conditions of the airplane, other passengers recounted their experiences with Air Malta. They sounded very very similar.
As all good patriots we joked about Air Malta and then we said that if we were to rename the Air Malta air fleet we would give them the appropriate new names.
Josef Bonnici, Joe N Tabone, Louis Grech and Austin Gatt.
We laughed so much that we nearly cried.
Perhaps we should have done away with the laughing and just simply let the tears roll down.
Can anyone tell me what Richard Cachia Caruana is up to. Rumour has it that he is a much diminished man with very limited influence on Dr Gonzi. The last time I saw him he was driving the wrong way at Marsa trying hard to avoid a traffic jam created by our splendid road planners.
One last thing before I park my car in Fatima’s reserved parking slot. Junior minister Frans Agius known to the public as Minister Lapsus has had his communications coordinator Randolph Spiteri suggest that I am his good friend.
He also has argued with staff at MaltaToday that when we interviewed Alfred Sant we treated Sant differently and that we sent him the questions beforehand.
Needless to say, I am not Mr Spiteri’s good friend. Not even an acquaintance. I tend to hug my good friends, and share a bite, a drink and sort of hit it out on the same wavelength.
Randolph does not quite fit in this category.
Regarding his Alfred Sant invention, I suggest he logs on to: http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/dial_a_poem_poets/nova/Nova-Convention_08_zappa.mp3
From the Nova Convention in New York way back in 1978, that should answer his second invention.
saviourbalzan@newsworksltd.com
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