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The other day I was filming in the garden at the Old Railway Station at B’Kara. A stone throw’s away from the dirty bus terminus. The garden reminds me of urban Malta.
It is a barren, desolate, ugly spot; garish and forgotten. It could be a gem with the unique station building and geriatric ficus trees.
It is a tribute is it not to the local council formerly led by Tonio Fenech that the gardens have never been transformed to something more worthy of Malta’s largest town?
B’Kara is home to two former Prime Ministers and countless ministers and yet, today, in so many places it is a forgotten city with small eruptions of red bricks and lonely trees.
In my younger days, those of the Laqxija slums, it was a sweeter place, a buzzing city, not as polluted as today and on the edges trapped by endless fields laden with carob trees.
Yet it is not only B’Kara that is suffering such a sad future. Back in 1987, I had a dream like so many others. I led myself to believe that the new administration would bring harmony to our surroundings, erase the mistakes and start afresh. Little did I know how wrong I was. Eddie may have saved us from Mintoffianism, but not from the cronyism and self-centred politics of the eighties that made the individual central and egoism more.
The dilapidated state of our towns and surroundings is a reflection of the mindset of our politicians. There is despair in the people’s eyes. They cannot see the light, all they hear are slogans, smiles on TV, and more smiles.
After we stopped filming I turned to the cameraman, aged 43 and told him, “What a pity, this garden could be so pretty?”
He did not pause and simply said: “I have given up on this country, I do not really care anymore.”
In an interview in this newspaper Tonio Fenech does not talk of gardens in B’Kara. He is more preoccupied with the bigger picture, but he finds no problems defending his choice of consultants. He did not have a look around, he did not have a call for applications. To be fair to him, he has no precise procedures to follow because there are no procedures.
He has no hang ups arguing on the choice of auditors, his former employers whom I am sure would take him up again, if he landed himself in the opposition benches and without his present job as the PM’s shadow.
Tonio Fenech is a youngish bullish sort of mini minister and his interpretation of ethics is not juvenile but alien to European Union politics.
He sees nothing incorrect in choosing consultants and advisors without a closer look around himself. He has every right to judge himself as ethical, but in his heart of hearts he must be aware that his actions are unacceptable to those who care to debate the issues.
For years now, cash rich appointments have continued unabated. To the unassuming this is how it works in Malta. It cannot go on like this.
Lawrence Gonzi has to place the word meritocracy above everything else.
The Prime Minister still needs to see the big picture and shy away from the boys at Pietà who offer him all sorts of stone age advice of how best to shoot himself in the foot.
All these ‘Piangi il telefono’ opinion articles in the ‘independent’ press are so blatantly one-sided that I can fully understand why certain journalists feel exasperated that they cannot write freely.
Last week, at a business breakfast organised by sister newspaper The Malta Financial & Business Times, Jesmond Mugliett’s announcement that Richard England would be involved in the Opera house led the Maltese architects to gasp in disbelief.
‘Not again’ was written in invisible ink all over their faces.
Which was more than understandable. Considering that there are no procedures in place on how architects are chosen and end up invoicing government thousands of liri,
Richard England is to Malta what Michelangelo was to the Popes. Though I am sure that in forty years time the only thing we will recall about England is his belief that the architectural interpretation of LOVE is an upside concrete monument next to overflowing sewage in Spinola Bay.
Which brings me back to the gardens at B’Kara. More often than not, the things that need mending, whether it is the way procedures function, the appointment of officials, the award of tenders, the upkeep of our surroundings is being scrutinised not by the politicians, but by the media.
The issue at stake here is that we cannot go on dilly-dallying about the individuals who are to blame for this fracas.
The first person that needs to be scolded for his ‘under the carpet’ approach to things is undoubtedly Eddie Fenech Adami. There is this view that everything will blow away and that people will forget.
Which brings me to Dar Malta and all the trumpets blowing from the direction of Pieta and the control freak department.
The simple truth is that Malta is to spend Lm9 million and the amount will certainly rise above that amount. No matter what is said and uttered in silly press releases the public could not give a flying cackle about Pietà’s side of things.
Malta cannot even get its act together to have a decent garden in the heart of B’Kara.
The government says it does not have the money to subsidise small but very much-needed projects in our towns and villages. But what is worse is the farce we live in.
When I visited Malta House in London some year ago, I cannot forget the frustration of the press posse, who could not find a computer that could handle a picture file.
Most of the computers were obsolete, with hard disk memory so ridiculously small that they could not hold all the names of the government appointed consultants lumped together.
Malta House is bang next to Piccadily Circus, the most expensive corner in London, but in 2003 it was Windows 95 for most of the embassy staff.
That is how it is going to be. Dar Malta in Brussels will probably have the most impressive automated toilet flushing system but not the tools for the staff to work with.
We are going to have a palace bang in the middle of Brussels, but in those asbestos stripped offices the same mediocre office set up will be in place.
It is not the building that makes the embassy but its representatives and their actions.
Enough for this week I have started to feel the same repulsive feelings of my cameraman.
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