Phantom of the Opera House

The phantom disrupting the life of our Opera House in Valletta must be more than 144 years old. It started making things difficult right from the very beginning, in 1860 when the British governor took steps to build the Opera House.
The project was engulfed in controversy from the start with accusations of irregularities in the tendering process, bad workmanship, exorbitant charges, unauthorised alterations to the original plans, so much so that the first foundations had to be demolished and reconstructed by another contractor.
A Select Committee was set up to investigate the abuses. Some Maltese politicians took the opportunity to blame this shabby way of doing things on the fact that Malta was still a British colony in those days and the Maltese were not adequately represented in the running of the affairs of the islands. They were sure - 142 years ago - that once the Maltese had more say in running these islands, the administration of the country and the management of projects like the building of the Opera House would improve immensely.
The Opera House was finally completed and inaugurated 138 years ago, on 9 October 1866. But the Phantom struck again seven years later when the theatre was extensively damaged by fire and had to be reconstructed. It took four years to reconstruct the theatre and the new inauguration took place on 11 October 1877.
In April 1942 the German Luftwaffe reduced the Opera House to a heap of rubble. In the last 62 years the rubble has at least been cleared but the site is still unbuilt and gapes like an ugly mouth at all those who enter Valletta through the main city gate. For 40 of these 62 years since the Opera house was bombed we have been a sovereign nation. So this time we cannot blame the coloniser for neglecting our cultural heritage or for failing to get its act together to rebuild the Opera House. We have no one to blame but ourselves.
Between 1942 and 2004 there have been four attempts to reconstruct the Opera House site: in 1954, in 1991, in 1995 and in 1998.
The failure to rebuild the site is a symptom of our national malaise. The phantom haunting it is within us. In fact we are the phantom. The neglect, abandonment and shabbiness there is on the site can be seen throughout the country. Our behaviour and mindset are to blame. We have ruined this country, overbuilt it in an ugly way and choked it in traffic. We allow waste and rubbish to spread across our towns and villages and in the countryside. We are allowing our natural and historical heritage to deteriorate. The Knights built Valletta. The Maltese built Little Armier.
We are allowing mediocrity and complacency to turn us into a stagnant society. The forces of decay and stagnation dominate over the forces of renewal and regeneration.
This does not bode well for a country that has tough challenges to face: regenerating the economy, creating jobs and wealth and instilling fresh life into public structures and services for Malta and Gozo to survive and thrive in the 21 century. Wide-ranging problems: not just the reconstruction of the Opera House in Valletta but a debilitating structural deficit and public debt, environmental degradation, the lack of fresh investment, de-industrialisation, loss of economic competitiveness, decaying public institutions, a corrosive culture of cronyism has been allowed to pile up, their solution put aside for another year.
We cannot face these tough challenges with more of the same mindsets that the present Cabinet is immersed in. We need real changes. We have to adopt the habits, attitudes and behaviour of dynamic societies, successful at developing open societies and effective economies. These dynamic societies are effective because they manage to harvest the knowledge, skills and talents of as many people as possible living within them.
After short spate in government, between 1996 and 1998, where we tried to do things differently by starting to run the country in a non-partisan manner and got punished for it I feel justified to say that to a large extent most if not the whole country is to blame. Malta has the politicians it deserves. Our electoral system gives our voters the right to vote not only for the party of their choice but also for the individual candidates of their choice. Our members of parliament reflect their voters. Our politicians are irresponsible, incompetent, corrupt and sterile to the degree that is tolerated if not downright demanded by the voters themselves. We need good, honest, competent politicians but to have them the voters must be ready to reward honesty and competence in politicians and not continue to see them as their patron saints without whom they cannot get any benefits from heaven.
I repeat I am not trying to exonerate politicians. We cannot be blamed for reflecting our society. In fact if we do not pander to the wishes of our electorate we risk not being elected at all. So the quality of our politicians is also a reflection of the quality of our voters. Where we are to blame as politicians in bringing about the mess the country is in, is when we accept and promote the negative values of our people, when we not only fail to diagnose the sickness of our society but also aggravate it.
We need to show leadership as politicians and not simply parade ourselves as tails wagged by our voters. This kind of leadership has been lacking in our country, especially during all these years that the country was run on a “money no problem” worldview with only one goal in mind: “Spend money on what you think will buy you a vote.” The message drummed repeatedly into the heads of our citizens was: “We can spend as much as we like, those who come after us will pay the bills.”
No wonder today government and citizens continue to live beyond their means. This kind of unsustainable and reckless politics has corrupted our people and is still depriving them of the mindset, skills and competencies they need to survive and thrive in the 21 century world. Till just over a year ago, before the EU referendum and the general elections, the party in government and its politicians continued to lull the voters into believing that we would continue to live happily ever after in fairy land if we returned them to power.
Public finances were on a sound footing. The reconstruction of the Opera House site financed by public funds was revived again. Public funding of education, health and welfare was sustainable and we could look forward to a future of prosperity and guaranteed jobs and dramatic improvement in our environment and our quality of life.
Public finances are no longer on a sound footing. The whole republic has become very wobbly as taxes rise, unemployment soars and government cuts spending in education, health, welfare as all of a sudden the government has discovered that even the budget for this year is unsustainable and has to continue cutting public expenditure in next year’s budget.
The politics of deceit has destroyed the resilience of the people of this country. No wonder our people are traumatised by the discovery of the present reality after so many years of being told that “money is no problem.”
The same Party has been in government too long, it has run out of ideas, energy and good ministers to run the country. There is no way in the present situation that we can find the public funds to finance the reconstruction of the Opera House site. In this respect, the 1998 Labour proposal of reconstructing the site within a public-private partnership framework is not only worth revisiting, but the only way forward. The over-riding concept of having the private sector develop the underground space for a car park and for commercial use, such as shops, to finance the cultural facilities above ground in public control, is still valid. We should stop talking vaguely and simply repeating a wish list without thinking at the same time of how we are going to finance and manage our projects well. The new building on the site should include a large theatre and concert hall, space for a museum of contemporary art and space that can be used for different cultural activities. But to avoid building a cathedral in the desert we need a vigorous educational and cultural policy to attract more children and young people to culture and the arts.
The Kultura 2000 survey published by the National Statistics Office a few years ago show that in 1999, 81 percent of our citizens never went to a concert. 81 percent did not go once to the theatre. 70 percent did not visit one single museum. Only eight per cent attended a dance performance and only two per cent went to the theatre more than five times. We must work on a strategic action plan to change these dismal statistics.
Reconstructing the Opera House site, reviving Valletta and administering it properly are only details in the big picture we must get right. It is up to us, all of us, in different ways to get rid of the phantom that contributes to the mess we are in. It is up to us. No Christina will turn up to give us a magic kiss and transform us. Those of you who are familiar with the story of the musical Phantom of the Opera‚ know that in the end the Phantom is redeemed by the kiss of his loved one - Christina. But reality is more complicated than the musical and it is going to take much more than a kiss to redeem us from ourselves and allow us to move ahead.
Extracts from a speech given by Labour spokesperson for tourism Evarist Bartolo during The Malta Financial & Business Times breakfast organised this week at the SAS Radisson.