J’accuse: Oliver’s Twist & Other Perspectives

Almost 20 years have passed since I used to hitch rides to the university in the evening to attend a series of lectures by Professor Oliver Friggieri. If my memory serves me right, the lectures were about creative writing in Maltese but in actual fact they served as a real eye opener that went far beyond any tips on how to use your pen creatively. If you learn the benefits of learning and asking questions at the age of 16 then the world is your oyster. “Id-dinja mistoqsija, mimlija b’elf ghaliex” (“the world is a question full of a thousand ‘why’s’”).

What Prof. Friggieri imparted, among many other things, was the importance of observing the world around you, looking for clues of change as well as for the strands of similarity that occasionally get to give us a sense of identity or belonging. It was Oliver’s twist on life and it became a useful tool as life went on.

It was a pleasure to see Oliver (forgive me the first name sense of familiarity) on TV last Monday. There he was giving his take on different aspects of our life and the way we are. Are we partisan? Why? Where do we begin to look for an answer? There was that and more peppered with what I saw as the humility to declare (admit?) the limits of his comprehension. This was apparent when he was asked whether our party TV stations make us more partisan: “It’s a difficult question and I cannot answer it.” Oliver has never tired of reminding us that the world should be our reference point and nothing should be examined out of context. Twenty years may have passed but his philosophical yardstick used to see the world around him remains pleasantly reliable.

Mind the revolution

Browsing through Facebook the next day I was surprised to see a negative reaction to Oliver’s appearance on TV. The general idea was that Oliver was yet another of the mild intellectuals of the island who dance around controversy preferring the fence to the battlefield. I think that assessment is unfair. Oliver is less about controversy and criticism and more about sociological snapshots. He is less about the controversial medicine and more about the discovery of DNA and our origins. He has been observing for a long time now and is not about to pop a cigar into his mouth, grow some beard and wear military slacks while announcing the intellectual coup d’êtat on the nation’s corroded junta of partisan ignorantia.

Expecting Oliver to become Simón Bolívar is wrong. You also have to wonder exactly what kind of revolution people are expecting. We have become somewhat lax with words − something Oliver tried to explain to Lou. As an expat feeding solely on news as it is filtered, I can vouch that it is more and more difficult to fathom what is really going on in the country. When you reach a situation that a Times report is so convoluted that it could provoke a seminar of interpretations, then it is difficult to really observe and comment.

The picture is twisted beyond ken. I read an article in an English language newspaper that seemed to refer to authors generally commenting on the infamous Realtà article. Nowhere in the article could you find an indication that these were witnesses in the Magistrates’ Court. It was only after reading other papers that I understood why the likes of Maria Grech Ganado and Ranier Fsadni had decided to “revive” the subject. Then there was the reporting on the honorarium saga. What with parties wanting to spin their take, and with journalists getting half-baked reports, it was a total mess. Look at the post “Honour Among Thieves” in www.akkuza.com to see what I mean.

Praeter intentionem

Or as Aquinas would put it − per accidens or outside the moral intention. We are becoming more and more slack with the use of our words or reporting. Most times we get the excuse that the resulting miscommunication was “not intended”. We try to define the indefinable such as “What is a real Nationalist?” after the latest manual revolutionary (from the DIY of PN backbenchers) has drawn his dividends from the D’Hondt one-man majority conundrum.

We swing between the hands of the Opposition that would love us to believe that this is the eternal battle of Rich (arrogant) vs. Poor (subject) and the gaffes of the party in government (We didn’t mean to get greedy). We fall over ourselves in asking the ridiculously sublime question of “What would Ugo Mifsud have done?”

Sadly a necessary and important debate about formulating a proper pay scale for MPs that justifies their job has been turned into a political football. The point is that while we apparently already know the answer to the question whether our politicians deserve the money they vote themselves, we fail to ask ourselves the even more important question: “Do we deserve the politicians that we elect?”

Honoraria: What lies beneath

Fausto Majistral has done a wonderful job of asking the right questions about the honoraria. Again you can find his post entitled “Honoraria: What lies beneath” in J’accuse − the blog. It’s less about whether Gonzi meant it, whether J.P. Farrugia deserved it, or whether Joseph’s Labour have really grasped the concept that it’s not theirs to donate if they pooh-poohed accepting it in the first place. It’s more about where we want

to go with our House of Representatives. Alfred Sant and Franco Debono have both made not too subtle statements about the current state of disrespect that surrounds our House of Representatives.

Something tells me that that is a lesson that our wannabe revolutionaries and half-baked political class still cannot get to terms with. We do not need saviours but a good set of servants, well paid if necessary, but servants nevertheless.

U ssirlek poezija (and it becomes a poem)

Jack Frost is back in the north of Europe and it’s a cold cold time again. It gets warmer in the living room catching up on the excellent series “Mad Men” with a smashing soundtrack (Enoch Light’s Autumn Leaves is a screamer). For the app fanatics about, I strongly recommend “Google Goggles” − watch your iPhone solve the hardest of sudokus before your eyes. One last word goes to one of the world’s latest citizens.

A big welcome goes out to baby Ella who turns eight (days) today. It’s a big, big world Ella, but if you ask the right questions you can turn it into the most wonderful of poems. At least Oliver told me so!

www.akkuza.com provides a wealth of information to the lost expats. Venture inside to interpret the mixed messages coming from the isle of milk and honey.