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Just imagine’, goes the advert radioed out to the world by Maltco. “Really ta”… just imagine if Harry Vassallo would be the Prime Minister. Or Alfred Sant, if luck comes his way.
Now both men as we all know are fathers. Nothing wrong with that, I hope. Just imagine: one of their sons or daughters decides to wed. Again, nothing wrong with that.
Then, the wedding guests, instead of receiving an invitation to attend a function at Villa Parisio or Hotel Phoenicia or an elegant restaurant, you receive a wedding invitation that their kids are to celebrate their wedding at Girgenti Palace, the official summer residence of the Prime Minister.
Just imagine, the PN media machine. Indeed, one need not imagine. They would gossip and spread rumour about how privilege does not come easy to all of us, how Joe Bloggs has to try his luck and book a wedding hall two years in advance whereas…
They would – as the old Maltese slang goes – make a feast out of them. But this is all in my imagination, indeed I am probably being frivolous and petty.
And why should I bring up the subject?
Why, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi would never allow any of his unprivileged family to make use of a state residence at Girgenti! Never, never!
Talking about state residences I cannot but help congratulate the Maltese government for letting us not know that (1) it is planning to sell the enormous counting hall and its grounds to the US Department of State, and (2) that it has given air space to the US military.
The ease with which the Maltese government chooses to dispense with its territorial assets is surprising.
In the first instance, I cannot understand why the US would need such a large footprint for its embassy. This is after all a country the size of a redneck outpost somewhere along the Mississippi. Unless that is, this US embassy has the intention of setting up some kind of Hollywood-like communications centre.
If this is not case, then no wonder they accuse the Americans of thinking big, very big. And if that is the case, then Minister Frendo must turn round to his Prime Minister and explain that as a European Union country, we cannot appear to be such honkey-kissing lackeys.
Which is just what happened when Minister Frendo missed out on the important EU decision on Turkey. He stood as being one of the only foreign ministers not to attend. Instead he sent one of his minions, by the name of Richard.
The other consideration high on the agenda of the US is terrorism. Now I have always believed that terrorists have no intention of hitting at Malta, for the simple reason that that they think that Malta has no role to play in international politics. Indeed they consider Malta to be quite an ok kind of state. We do have a role to play but no bigger than the role Iceland has to play in international world affairs. So can someone bring us all down to ground zero?
I am more so amazed at the welcome Bush gave to Lawrence Gonzi. The press offices painted this event as a diplomatic success story. It is more than that. It could be a clear attempt by the US to set an agenda for Maltese foreign policy and to encourage Malta to serve as a ventriloquist for Bush foreign policy in Brussels.
It is as bizarre as Mintoff’s obsession when he blocked the OSCE meeting and insisted with the Soviet Union and the US in 1973 to stay out of the Mediterranean.
In life we all love not to be underlings. In the army everyone dreams of being the captain not the corporal, in an office the supervisor not the clerk, in government of being a minister not a backbencher.
The visit to the US exposed our impressive ability of serving as a chipmunk to a grizzly bear. Worse still, we allowed two important agreements pertinent to US-Malta relations to surface after the press cared to investigate.
When I thought that European Union membership would ripen our vision for our country, we end up with no place to count our votes in and part of our airspace is taken up by a nation that is hated by a bunch of fundamentalist war hogs flying the banner of Islam.
Our PM has much to rejoice about. With the stroke of a nod and a smile, he manages to take up 35 minutes of Bush’s time and leaves us with nowhere to count all the votes the opposition party will garner in the next election.
There is no beating around the bush. The left in Malta – and by left I mean the Labour party – should take a very hot sauna and reinvent itself.
The verbal comment on Int X’Tahseb programme to the presence of Mark Montebello at a protest of rightists and fascists in Valletta was incomprehensible and, with all due respect to its author, MLP secretary-general Jason Micallef, unacceptable.
Jason Micallef could very well be the much needed breath of fresh air in the Labour party, but he needs to sit down with someone who can point out to him the principles and soul of social democracy. In other countries, racism is primarily battled by the socialist parties. In Malta the socialist parties are acting in the same way a populist and right-wing party would act.
On Int X’Tahseb, Jason said that “the others”, the others being the extremists, had a permit and Montebello did not. So bloody what?
I am all for Jason’s free speech but not when it comes from someone who should know better. The police, who cannot tell a friend from a foe, accosted Mark Montebello and tore up his poster.
It did not stop here. Salvu Sammut, the president of the GWU, argues that immigrants will bring disease. He goes to repeat the rubbish that appears on and off in It-Torca. It is once again rather sad – a left-winger sounding more like Enoch Powell but without the flair and intellectual disposition of Powell. It’s like eating uncooked spaghetti.
I guess Mr Sammut does not know who Mr Powell was, with the Lm20K he has just received from our taxes as a former Interprint employee. He could perhaps buy himself a history book, to discover Powell was a charismatic figure with an eloquence which would surpass all the GWU speakers put together.
But Salvu Sammut’s ‘mard mill-immigranti’ speech is chicken feed compared to what the union has managed to do to itself. Ridding itself of two members who cannot in any way be described as useless, is an awful mistake. Manwel Micallef and Josephine Attard Sultana are no longer. They have been ousted not by militants but by yes-men.
Unions are democratic institutions but the decision to keep the contestants out of the media reminds of the time Fr Joe Borg decided to regulate the appearance of the contestants for the Nationalist leadership post on state TV.
Let us not be scandalised by what happened in the GWU, all these parties and organisations are temples of hypocrisy – they preach one thing and then do the absolute opposite.
A reasonably justifiable query is why monuments and our national heritage such as Portes des Bombes do not have CCTVs to avoid ugly vandal incidents.
The answer to that question is simple. All the monitoring equipment are utilised by private companies to watch over our blessed yellow lines and bad parking.
It is a question of priorities. It appears that raking profits for a private company are far more important than our national heritage.
I have never celebrated Halloween in my life. But I have every intention of doing it next time round. The Church wakes up and suggests that this is a pagan event. Then what should it say to all the festas with inebriated topless lads and girls in hot-pants dancing away in front of a plaster of Paris effigy of St Joseph to the taunts of Santa Marija aficionados calling St Joseph a cuckold. Every time I get a bit closer to my faith, some idiot makes a new declaration and I am flung back into the arms of Satan.
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
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