Saviour Balzan takes a historical and cultural perspective at Malta and the Maltese
In my twenty years as a journalist I have written several times about the mediocrity of Malta and the Maltese. Yet, I have also talked about Malta being a special place. Malta is indeed a unique place. Less than 400,000 people populate a footprint that is slightly smaller than London city, 312 square km.
Sixty years ago, the principal political question was whether, Italian or English should be the official language. Thankfully, the colonial government’s fear of Benito Mussolini’s fascism encouraged the British to promote the Maltese language spoken by the workers and peasants as an official language.
The Maltese have some distinctive features, namely, they speak their own language and are proud of it.
Though they refuse to accept that it is a Semitic language with a good injection of Italian words.
They inherited this from the time the Arabs ruled Malta hundreds of years ago. Undeniably, then the Maltese were Moslem, though many Maltese cannot believe that this was the case.
Today Maltese are staunch Roman Catholic, they are a conservative and an entrepreneurial folk. On paper, Maltese do not give the impression of being a very well to do society, but this is a false impression, indeed they are very well off.
Per capita there appear to be more Mercedes and BMW than other place in Europe.
More over 75 per cent of all Maltese own their property. And Maltese properties are huge and spacious and over 10 per cent own a second property.
All households practically have a telephone line and there are 252,000 vehicles on an Island which is 48 km by 19 km wide.
When the government clamped down on Maltese who held undeclared funds abroad, it transpired that Maltese had millions of euros in undeclared bonds and funds in the UK alone.
When the crash in Argentina happened some years back, Maltese it was discovered lost quite a handsome sum. Gozitans from Xaghra representing the largest segment.
Malta is a Republic, yet its politics are dominated by a very divisive political system that promulgates a two party system.
The Christian Democrats prefer to call themselves Nationalists and have been in government for over 17 years.
Over the years they have extended their form of populist policies to attract a diverse electorate with different socio-economic background.
Yet, before the Second World War many of their leaders were unadulterated sympathisers to the fascists and received funds from the Italian state.
The Socialists held government from 1971 until 1987 and left a sad legacy for human rights and the economy.
To Malta's loss, the archaic electoral system allows for only a two party system since it envisages that a party must attain a threshold of over 16%. in any one constituency. This practically leaves the third party, the Greens out of the political picture.
Malta remains very politicised; the political parties own their own TV and radio stations and their own newspapers and are predominately intolerant to differing opinions.
Malta has one of the richest and most diverse archaeological and historical sites of the whole of Europe. The Neolithic temples in Malta are probably least known in Europe yet they are one of the best preserved and most interesting of all temples of this period in Europe and the World..
Though Malta and its sister Island have suffered under a general absence of town planning, strangely a good slice of the Islands are still underdeveloped as a result of the deep ravines, cliffs and valleys that criss-cross the hilly Islands. The sea, sun and pleasant weather in winter is a guarantee of a relaxed atmosphere.
The long and mixed colonialists who owned Malta contributed to placing the small rugged Island on the map.
The Chevaliers de Malte dug deep into their coffers in their fiefdoms and built the most exquisite palaces, fortifications and Churches. Napoleon Bonaparte brought this to an abrupt end but soon after Britain sailed into Malta after the Maltese rebelled against the French. The British were undoubtedly more interested in Malta as a military fortress. So they tolerated and encouraged the power of the Catholic Church. They ruled the country for another 150 odd years until 1964 when the country was granted independence.
Malta indeed was the last independent nation in Europe and the last colonial outpost other than Gibraltar to be granted Independence.
Maltese love to believe that they are at the world’s centre-stage of things. So all Maltese will brag that they are the southernmost bastion of Roman Catholicism in the world with a 90% plus Roman Catholic aherence, that they beat off the Ottoman invasion in 1565 and withstood their siege for three whole months.
And that for three years from 1940 until 1943 they were the most heavily bombed place in the whole world and yet they did not surrender.
What the Maltese fail to do in international football they have achieved in their history. Now, Malta is do it again for we are to be the smallest member state in the European Union.
Nevertheless the Maltese have been able to negotiate special concessions on hunting in spring, property rights for Maltese and foreigners and the recognition of the Maltese language as an official language even though most people can also talk English rather fluently and most government documents are in English.
Malta remains a buzzing place, even though there are more places of worship than anywhere else in the world, Malta’s social and cultural ambience is dynamic, eclectic, liberal, sexy and tempting.
Abortion, divorce and pornography may be illegal, but Malta offers a bonanza for those seeking some ‘pagan form of life and entertainment to go with it.’
Away from the hysteria over Europe, accession will bring some fine tuning to the Maltese way of doing things, shocked by the need to declare their real assets, living beyond one’s means, putting an end to protection levies to preserve Maltese small industries and managing one’s business in unorthodox manner.
It is a yet another new beginning, and despite the insular nature of the Maltese, the Maltese are already eyeing this new huge market of 500 million citizens.
