Gullible. That is the only word I can find that describes the citizens of this nation. The question really is whether the immediate entourage surrounding Prime Minister Muscat are also equally prone to swallow his tales hook, line and sinker or whether they are in on the scam. The sparkle in their eyes when they declaim the latest “achievement” of Optimist Malta seems to favour the former theory of a bunch of gullible politicians. There is no hope other than to patiently wait for the travails of time to work their magic and uncover the cobweb of deceit that is being spun as we speak.
What’s the latest problem? Well. As soon as I heard of the agreement to set up an “American” University in Malta I smelt a fish. The general public’s reaction was thrown off track by the question of siting since the area earmarked for this new institution of partaking of tertiary knowledge was in an ODZ. So the chickens got cacking about the horror of the siting without really asking the most pertinent question of all: What the flying copulation is an American University? The heirs of socialist Malta and “jew b’xejn jew xejn” (and no there is no great distance between this lot and that lot – after all wasn’t Varist signing the agreement?) were proudly parading an agreement for a private fee-paying University to be built by foreign speculators on land not previously earmarked for development (far from it) and slapped with the label of “American” to boot. Mintoff is not just turning in his grave, he is spinning faster than Kurt Farrugia ever managed in a lifetime.
Instead of losing our heads on the ODZ development issue – which is a major distraction that would somehow still turn out to be the answer to the why of all this – our first question should have been “What do you mean American?”. This is not some internationally acknowledged guarantee of educational quality. This is not Oxford, Cambridge, MIT or College of Europe opening a campus in Malta. It turns out, thanks to the work of Antoine Vella, that the much vaunted DePaul University only lent a guiding hand to the prospectors and will have nothing to do with the University. The prospectors turn out to be Middle Eastern blokes who are in the business of construction – so much for education eh… So in the end a Trojan Horse of a University is what we have. The important thing is that they will build and ruin more of the South and its coastline.
As I said, the American bit made me sit up and check what was going on. In my student days I had met a couple of students during exchanges abroad who would come from Middle Eastern and Maghreb Universities. They would invariably state that they came from an American University – whether it was Cairo, Lebanon, Tel Aviv, there was always an “American” label somewhere. There is nothing really American about these universities. The label serves to sell the image as a Western style uni by giving an added agreeable ring to it. You can find “American” Universities in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and India. They tend to be reserved for higher paying classes of the local population – enclaves for figli di papà. We are not even sure whether the building contractors who will run the University that is to be built on virgin undeveloped land will be able to guarantee a proper quality of education.
Malta has already had its famous share of Made in America salesmanship. Nidal Binni has made a killing selling snail creams, Blue Pain Relief and all sorts of similar stuff (and has now ironically branched into Real Estate). For a very long time his catching marketing came under the title of “Made in America”. It’s the kind of quick marketing that appeals to a certain type of customer. Shall I say gullible?
I wish all the luck in the world to the hard working Nidal. It’s the snake oil merchants in government who cannot be trusted. Especially after this latest American Lie.
