Author: Jacques René Zammit

After the forced hiatus thanks to the great storms in central Europe J’accuse returns with a multi-part Zolabyte by Fausto Majistral. In this serialised perspective Fausto looks back at the salient moments of the year that is about to end. Here goes…

LOCAL COUNCILS

Here’s a thought to brighten your day: 2010 was the first election-free year since 1993 (that’s, of course, if you don’t take into account the gripping administrative elections in places like Bubaqra and Xlendi). Main reason was the hiatus in local elections until 2012. But that doesn’t mean local councils were not in the news. Charges brought against a number of councillors gave reason for one paper to ask whether the whole local government system was at risk.

This was a wrong diagnosis. The number of charges brought which were related to elective office were four (MaltaToday counts eight but half of these are not, strictly speaking, related to the office). Two of these include the mayor of Sta Venera not issuing a €80 invoice and the mayor of Żebbuġ (Gozo) charged with having bought a laptop with public funds and which, so far, seems to have been purchased with the council’s agreement, to do council work from home — the incriminating “evidence” being the daughter using it to play around on FB.

More serious are the charges brough against the former mayors of San Gwann and Sliema, the latter which also offered the drama of a particuarly spectacular fall. Starting off from the Executive Secretary flagging irregularities, to a police investigation, to a statement admitting acceptance of bribes, to a kind of retraction (offered to the media but not in court), to political arm-twisting and a suffered no-confidence motion.

The Nationalist Party may have managed to cordon off the toxic area. But the depth of the division within Nationalist ranks in Sliema became evident and Robert Arrigo seems to be less of a shining star now.

COMEBACK KID

Local government was jinxed in 2010 … right to the top. Chris Said had to relinquish his post as PS (responsible amongst other things for local government) because he was to face charges of perjury. Things worth putting on record. First, that the “perjury” involved an inconsequential point about whether a Court session took place in the morning or the afternoon. Second, nobody thought, for a moment, that Said should be found guily and his speedy comeback was welcomed as much as it was deserved.

Finally, and more importantly, it reminded us of the murky waters of troubled families where litigation is no holds barred and downright nasty and poor Chris Said who got sucked in. If there’s a lingering image of the state of broken families in Malta is the First Holy Communion in Dingli where a “re-union” dictated by the particular circumstances, ended in a free-for-all fist fight.

PMB DIVORCE

Which brings us to the landmark political event of the year: the presentation of a Private Member’s Bill on divorce by Jeffery Pullicino-Orlando. This was not the first PMB on the matter: Joe Brincat presented one in 1996. But if 1996 were bad timing, Pullicino-Orlando has shown himself to be shrewd.

Not that the whole thing has been seamless. The Pullicino-Orlando’s first motion was a copy-and-paste of Irish legislation. Thankfully, a second motion presented jointly with Evarist Bartolo, actually takes note of the fact that Malta has a civil code and a family law tradition of its own. Sadly, it gave the whole enterprise an “as we go along” kind of air.

Take, for example, the supposed way to the referendal poll booth. Pullicino-Orlando says that sometime between the bill’s second and third reading a provision will be made for the holding of the referendum and, if the result is in the affermative, MPs will (hopefully) for for it. On this he says he has the advice of Ian Refalo. So be it. In which case Prof Refalo would be kind to explain how the provisions of a bill can have the effect of law.

Nevertheless, this must have been the media event of 2010. True, the pro and contra of divorce we had already heard before but this time they came back with full force, accompanied by the issue whether the government or MPs had a mandate to enact such a piece of legislation. The answer to which is: yes, if precedent counts for anything; the infamous 1993 agreement with the Vatican did not feature in an electoral programme or a referendal question.

EXEUNT

The bell tolled and this time Prof Demarco couldn’t be late. Mgr Nikol Cauchi, whose manner you get to appreciate the more you listen to his successor, followed some months after.

Not quite the same place, but John Dalli and Louis Galea are off to Brussels and Luxembourg. Dalli promises to come back to the political fray in four years time. He’d be close to seventy by then.

RELIGION

The Pope came and went. Granted, Benedict does not have the crowd-pulling power of his predecessor (who can also be credited with being the first pontiff to visit Malta and to beatify the first three Maltese). But the papal visit was, er, overshadowed by the Luqa monument. Rome and the Vatican have their many marble nudes so why should ours be offensive? Just because it’s ceramic?

Pity because the Maltese visit was historic at least in one sense: for the first time the Pontiff had a private meeting with victims of pastoral abuse. The request for a meeting could have been brushed off in many ways. There were risks, at the time these were still allegations under investigation and the papal visit was short (on those grounds the Church authorities rightly brushed off the request for a meeting made by the Nevada Hindu guru who has now become a perennial niusance).

But it did happen. And by all accounts it was a success (well, as much success one can hope for in the circumstances). It might be the beginning of a long way in which the Church stops being so defensive or, worse, shifting the blame on others as did Cardinal Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, when he blamed homosexuals on pastoral abuse.

ARTS AND CULTURE

Work on Piano’s design of City Gate began over an acute case of general echolalia involving works with the “-less” suffix. The theatre is “roofless”, the gate is “gateless” (has been for a couple of centuries or so) and the proposal “spineless”.

Two interesting developments. Labour, who had been mum for sometime noticed where the crowd was charging and placed itself at the head. Not in a very convinced manner, of course, just adopting the cliched (and wrong) calls for preserving “a 16th century baroque city”).

Second were the attempts to stop it. Film Director Mario Philip Azzopardi called for a collection to rebuild a theatre: €10 from 100,000 for five years. Azzopardi had big plans to mobilise the masses and even had the wording of the inauguration plaque ready. Emails, it has been said, streamed by the dozen. Contributions? Not so sure. Probably not even enough to pay for the inaugural plaque the wording on which he has already figured out.

Then there was “Stop Project Piano”, an anonymous internet initiative which set up a petition to call a referendum (which wasn’t doable). Pity those poor sods who gave their personal data to perfect strangers …

ikompli…

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Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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