Malcolm and Clyde: Of ghosting and ghost reports

Malcolm Paul Agius Galea was honest enough to admit that his appointment as arts and culture minister was traumatic.

His words, spoken behind closed doors at the Festival of Ideas, confirm that he was handed the wrong portfolio. 

But more worrying than Agius Galea’s admission of his own vulnerability when handling a sector he has little clue about, is his concept of what creativity is—presumptuous and dangerous. It is his generalisation of artists as people who “believe they are God’s gift to the world” that is warped. It is his warning that creative ideas could negatively influence audiences and that they must adhere to certain “norms” that is disturbing. 

That the minister questions the dependence of artists and creatives on public funding is problematic because it shows his lack of understanding of the market. If the government truly believes that the creative economy has an important social role to play—whether it is a to provoke thought and challenge boundaries or simply to entertain and beautify—public funding will remain crucial in a small country like Malta. 

If the minister feels there is abuse within the sector on how public funds are used, it is his duty to ensure accountability and transparency. But while he was at it, Agius Galea could have added a word or two to condemn the delay in payments by certain government entities when it comes to paying creatives for contracted work, or worse the expectation by some that work be done for free in lieu of exposure. 

In his only comments so far after his ill-fated speech was leaked, the minister stopped short of making an honest apology. “Maybe I came across as being insensitive and maybe my remarks hurt the feelings of artists who work with their heart in this sector, as well as others whose livelihood depends on it… Maybe I could have used better words,” he told MaltaDaily, pledging to work harder in the interests of all people in the culture sector. 

After these comments, Agius Galea has gone into radio silence. He even ghosted journalists by cancelling public engagements to avoid being confronted with pertinent questions. 

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What the minister said was not simply a misunderstanding or the wrong choice of words. The problem is the minister’s inability to understand what free artistic spirit is. This is what caused many artists, creatives, parents of budding artistes, veterans and upstarts to criticise the minister’s words and demand his removal.  

Ghost report 

Clyde Caruana has told us that he penned a 300-page report back in 2018 warning about the consequences of rapid population growth on public infrastructure, communities, rents and schools. 

Now, Caruana is not one to ghost journalists. On the contrary, he has always been there to take questions. But he does appear to have been speaking about a ghost report that leaves us unsure whether anyone else apart from Caruana has ever seen, let alone read. 

Caruana has insisted he was the report’s author but not its owner and so has no authority to publish it. Today, we do not know whether this report exists somewhere, on a shelf, gathering dust, or whether someone lived up to the recent claim made former minister Evarist Bartolo and burnt it. 

It feels irresponsible that a report, which purportedly warned of the difficulties Malta finds itself in today as a result of unbridled population growth never saw the light of day. It feels irresponsible that the cautionary message was not used to plan better. 

It is a pity that government has only now discovered the will to address people’s concerns on overpopulation despite having the possibility to start thinking differently eight years ago. And even if the political turmoil of 2019 made the re-think impossible to consider, the pandemic was an invaluable period to start thinking differently once restrictions were lifted. None of this happened. The warnings contained in the 300-page report remained words on a paper, or turned to ash, for all these years with the finance minister now telling us that the doomsday scenario he had forecast has actually materialised. 

But it is rich for the minister now to try and wash his hands of a policy he was partly responsible for. Let’s face it, Caruana has been minister since the end of 2020. He had ample time to act on his own report if he wanted to. He chose not to despite the concerns coming from several quarters. Now, when the twin pressures of rising energy subsidies and expensive electoral pledges posed a threat to the 3% deficit target, Caruana decided to hit the panic button. 

Under the guise of slowing population growth by making foreign labour more expensive, he has punished third-country nationals through discriminatory measures. Rather than curbing work permits in economic sectors and jobs where the country does not need more workers, Caruana went about it in the most populist way—removing free public transport and child care for third country nationals, denying them the payment of the atypical work grant, making them to pay a yearly “infrastructure contribution”, and introduce a new monthly fee on those of them who drive. 

Meanwhile, we are left wondering what Caruana’s report contained and whether it could have provided a blueprint for gradual change without the need to foment an us-and-them attitude when dealing with third country nationals.