Breathe in, you are Malta
Mario Azzopardi takes to task the slogans chosen by the two main parties for their campaigns
There is something almost touching about the way Maltese politics still believes in slogans. Two or three words, stitched together with the confidence of revelation, released into the wild like they might actually mean something.
This year’s offerings do not disappoint. Or, rather, they do but in such perfectly predictable ways that disappointment feels almost ceremonial.
Int Malta (You are Malta).
One assumes this is meant to be uplifting. Instead, it lands like a mildly threatening diagnosis. You are Malta. Not part of it, not a citizen within it but the whole thing. The traffic, the cranes, the permits, the scandals, the speeches, the potholes. Congratulations, you are now personally responsible for all of it. It is the kind of slogan that sounds profound until you spend three seconds thinking about it, at which point it collapses into a vague, sticky sentiment that means everything and therefore nothing.
Then, from the other corner, we are offered Nifs ġdid (A new breath).
Not a plan, not a direction, not even a hint of substance. A breath. New, apparently. One imagines the country standing still while someone nearby exhales optimistically. It has the unmistakable tone of a deodorant advert or a wellness retreat. You do not fix structural problems, you simply inhale, exhale and hope the smell goes away.
What unites both slogans is their heroic avoidance of reality. No friction, no conflict, no acknowledgement that governing a country might involve difficult choices or uncomfortable truths. Instead, we are handed soft, malleable phrases that can be stretched to cover absolutely anything. Or nothing.
This is nothing but fog. Carefully crafted fog.
The tragedy is not that these slogans are bad. Bad would at least suggest effort. These are safe. Sanitised. Designed not to offend, not to provoke, not to commit. They are political elevator music, playing gently in the background while nothing of consequence is said.
And, perhaps, that is the point.
Because, in the end, a slogan like ‘You are Malta’ flatters you just enough to stop you asking questions while ‘A new breath’ reassures you just enough to avoid demanding answers. Between flattery and reassurance, democracy drifts comfortably into sleep.
Breathe in. You are Malta.
Try not to choke.