One of the slogans at the protest march held by the Maltese Patriots Association two week ago was Malta tal-Maltin, mhux tal-barranin (Malta belongs to the Maltese, not to foreigners).

It is easy to dismiss such slogans as an assault on normal standards of poetry by a xenophobic and pathetic minority. Except the kind of inward-lookingness they betray is much wider spread than that. It permeates many of our institutions.

This year the government launched what it called the Reach High Scholars Programme. The scheme offers generous funding to post-doctoral scholars who wish to develop their research projects before moving on to careers in various fields.

The idea is unimpeachable, because it makes sense to invest in an elite of top-notch scholars who will likely go on to produce world-class research. As is, the University of Malta does not have the financial means to fund post-doctoral fellowships of any significant kind.

The Reach High programme goes some way in that direction. I would have got the University, rather than the government, to administer it, but never mind. The idea is a good one anyway.

Which is why I supported the applications of four excellent scholars. The interviews were held two weeks ago and I was looking forward to news. The bit I have so far is not at all welcome.

One of the four is an Italian anthropologist who first came to Malta 11 years ago. She has since researched a doctorate on Maltese politics, curated an exhibition on the daily lives of women in Cospicua, taken part in a number of collaborative artistic projects, and set up as a freelance writer, translator and photographer based permanently in Malta and registered with the VAT department.

None of which was enough to convince the selection board at Reach High that she was worth interviewing. The sticking points were that she is not officially a permanent resident of Malta, nor does she hold a permanent job here. The facts that she holds a Maltese identity card, and that she has lived and worked here for several years, were deemed irrelevant. Her subsequent appeal was thrown out by the appeals board last Tuesday.

I am not accusing the selection and appeals boards of wrongdoing. They appear to have followed the prescribed eligibility criteria. A tad too religiously perhaps, but that is not my point here.

Rather, what bothers me is the hard-wired idea that the fruits of this world are in short supply, and that it is wise to keep them in-house and make them off-limits to all other comers.

When resources are allocated in a game of musical chairs on a tiny island, they tend to go to the undeserving

It’s what is known as the notion of the limited good, once thought to prevail among peasant societies. Couple that with a round of old-fashioned nationalism (‘Malta first and foremost’) and what you get is unprintable.

Indecency is the least part of the problem. What’s worse is that to think and act in such a way is to condemn oneself to insularity and marginality. The fact that Malta is an island is simply a physical-geographical one. It needn’t mean that we have to think as islanders.

Let me put it another way. Insularity begets insularity, but only if it is cultivated. Take a bigger island, and my own experience as an example.

In 1999 I started a doctorate at Cambridge. The fees were eye-wateringly high and I wouldn’t have got anywhere near them without a full three-year scholarship, which I won through an essay competition. It was an open competition with no questions asked. It didn’t matter a jot that I was about as British as Napoleon.

I got my degree in 2002, was offered a job in Malta, and left the UK for good. Surely not much of an investment for the people who had awarded me the scholarship, then? Depends. I still visit Cambridge to do research in the library, to give seminars, and to examine the occasional student. Besides, my gratitude and allegiance to that institution are there to stay.

There is nothing exceptional about my story. On the contrary, it tells of a well-trodden means by which British universities build broad networks of alumni and associates that extend well beyond Dover. The model is not limited to universities, and a good number of British institutions and enterprises are remarkably Catholic when it comes to this kind of shopping. I think it goes a long way to explain their success and high standards.

The case of someone who is disqualified from a fellowship competition because of some residency technicality is the opposite of that open model. It is an example of protectionism, of people closing ranks to defend what they imagine is theirs and theirs alone. It reminds me of the dragon Fafner guarding his precious gold.

The consequences of that protectionism are twofold. First, it tends to nurture and indeed to reward mediocrity. When resources are allocated in a game of musical chairs played by a small number of people cooped up on a tiny island, they tend to go to the undeserving.

Suffice it to look at the ongoing potlatch of positions of trust and the obscene salaries and heaps of perks that go with them. Most of these go to individuals who are so mediocre and useless that they wouldn’t last five minutes outside their comfort zone.

The second consequence of protectionism is that it leads to a perverse alchemy by which a physical insularity is transmuted into a social one. The open model I described earlier attracts people to a place. The protectionist one, on the other hand, makes them want to leave and shake the dust off their feet.

The Prime Minister has said that he wants to make Malta the best in Europe. Whatever that means, it is certainly not doable in a spirit of Malta tal-Maltin.

mafalzon@hotmail.com