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I have decided to change career. Instead of writing weekly, earth-shattering articles, which radically alter the geo-political balance of life as we know it, I have decided to fulfil a lifelong ambition of mine, and write the definitive, chronological history of the world’s greatest discoveries.
The contents would read something like this:
5,000 BC: Man invents wheel.
400 BC: Archimedes takes a bath.
450 AD: Attilla “il flagello di Dio” discovers that the Romans are really “un tribu’ di handicappati.”
1492: Christopher Colombus stumbles upon the New World (or as Denzel Washington once put it, America was discovered because “some white guy got lost.”)
1616: Galileo Galilei discovers to his horror that the Church is less interested in scientific discovery than in preserving its own power and influence (plus ca change);
1880s: Charles Darwin discovers (to the Church’s horror) that the human race is actually descended from a bunch of retard monkeys;
1969: US astronaut Neil Armstrong becomes the second man to walk on the Moon after Manuel Dimech, and;
2007: Lawrence Gonzi discovers this amazing new thing called “The Environment”.
Naturally, this latter is the most important discovery of all, not least because I was actually around when it happened. Not that I was present for it myself – although I must say, I am now kicking myself for having missed this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But unlike any of the others, it happened in my own lifetime. To be precise, on Thursday 17 May, when intrepid explorer Lawrence Gonzi emerged from the landing module, and took his first, giant step on the surface of the Xaghra l-Hamra garigue… after two years spent claiming that the same stretch of land either did not exist, or had no ecological value whatsoever.
That’s right, folks: the same garigue that Gonzi himself had previously dismissed as a worthless bit of wasteland – used only for off-roading and the dumping of bulky refuse, as I seem to recall – has suddenly and inexplicably metamorphosed before our eyes into our very own Garden of Earthly Delights. And what’s more, an area formerly pronounced to be devoid of life is now teeming with new and undiscovered species of fauna and flora: there are flowers, more flowers and the same flowers. Lizards scurry past, snakes writhe in copulation, butterflies flutter by, bees buzz agitatedly among the honeycombs… all this where previously there was no life at all; or what life there was had been invented by meddlesome “eco-fundamentalists”, precisely to get in the way of Gonzi’s own grand golf-course designs.
God, I wish I was there to see the look on our Prime Minister’s face, as caught his first glimpse of an orchid. An orchid! That weird and wonderful little perennial epiphyte, whose existence everyone had hitherto doubted… not to mention the geckos and the ladybirds; you know, all those miserable, inferior life-forms that Gonzi and his cabinet had pooh-poohed so mercilessly in the past; as though it was ludicrous to suggest that the unstoppable machine of progress should hitch and grind to a halt, simply for fear of squashing an insignificant little beetle, or because of some useless weed that some eco-terrorist had deliberately mistaken for an endemic species of moss.
But to apprehend the magnitude of this remarkable discovery, this most incredible change of heart, we really have to go back in time to a distant and murky past: all the way back to June 28 2005, when Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi – flanked by George Pullicino and a somnolent Francis Zammit Dimech – addressed a press conference specifically intended to belittle the ecological and cultural importance of the selfsame stretch of land which will now house Malta’s first Nature and History Park.
Back then, there was no talk of beautiful countryside or breath-taking views… still less of natural habitats, diverse vegetation or historic remains. On the contrary: Gonzi presided over a slide show, featuring photos strategically taken to minimise the area’s visual impact: focusing only on piles of garbage, collapsed rubble walls, abandoned vehicles, plastic bags and dust. The word I seem to remember reverberating back then was “zdingar”: which roughly translates as “neglect”, although to be honest there is no real English equivalent for that marvellously concise auditory evocation of filth, rot, ruin and disrepair.
But what I remember most is not Lawrence Gonzi mobilising the entire Department of Information to quash a rebellion by the usual handful of subversive eco-terrorists. No, the memory I will always cherish is that of a veritable army of grovelling Gonziphytes, all falling over one another in their desperate attempts to support their Beloved Leader’s arguments with their own contributions to cheapening the entire stretch of unspoilt countryside.
The farmers, we were told, “only produced qarabaghli…” (like, um, what exactly were you expecting? Mangos?) The existence of a perched aquifer, arguably the last straw that broke the entire golf course argument - was dismissed out of hand. And as for the birds and the bees: well, you can guess what imaginative suggestions were made as to where environmentalists could accommodate them, once they had lost their natural habitat to the game of golf.
And I can’t help but think: where are all these people now, that their Glorious Leader has abandoned the plans they had supported so openly, and now champions the selfsame part of Malta they themselves had helped to devalue?
By way of contrast, Gonzi’s own visions of pristine golf courses, with their rolling, humped fairways, their trickling water features, their immaculate greens and all those pretty little plastic flags… oh, the way they were presented to us back then made it almost impossible to argue against the project. Golf, we were told, would single-handedly rescue our tourism product from ruin. Opposing the golf course was tantamount to betraying the national interest… to jeopardising the livelihoods of everyone involved in tourism… to sinning against the Holy Ghost.
But two years, Lm100,000 and one Environmental Impact Assessment later, hey presto! Xaghra l-Hamra is suddenly transformed from a blasted heath to our very own Paradise on Earth. And OK, I know what you’re all thinking. If you close an eye at the overt hypocrisy, and the incredible cheek, it remains a wonderful thing that the Prime Minister should have finally realised the error of his ways... even if we all know that he is merely masquerading the extent of his own discomfiture. Likewise, it is great news that an ODZ area that would have been lost forever to a bunch of golfing tourists, is now to be made accessible to the entire country. And that the proposed national park is to be managed by the selfsame NGOs which had so tenaciously criticised the original golf course plan.
If that is really what you’re all thinking, I shall have to admit you all have a point… but for one, tiny detail.
There are, after all, ways and means of acknowledging defeat. For instance: it is one thing to admit having been mistaken, to humbly accept that one’s critics have been proved right, and to quietly change one’s position in a graceful and dignified way.
But it is another thing altogether to perform the mother of all acrobatic somersaults – only after the error of one’s ways was forcibly pointed out by an expensive EIA report, which merely confirmed what we all already knew anyway – and then, to try and sell the resulting “green conversion” for all the world as though it had been Lawrence Gonzi, and no one else, to have argued against a golf course all these years; to have championed little plants and small furry animals; to have fought so hard and so valiantly against entrepreneurs and unscrupulous speculators… all so that Maltese families can enjoy a sorely needed national park in the north west of the island.
Other than that… good morning, Lawrence. Would you like one spoon of sugar in your coffee, or two?
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