I doubt there’s anything more boring than a debate about some statue in Valletta. I don’t care about l-identità nazzjonali and persunaġġi Maltin, nor am I especially devoted to Queen Victoria. Still, she at least has the decency to not say or do very much. Pass her by, curse her, stick two fingers up at her and she won’t notice a thing.
The same cannot be said of certain other protagonists, and this is where I begin to care. Here we are, discussing whether or not to suffer the public image of someone who lived 150 years ago, and all the while perfectly happy to tolerate, indeed to entertain, the public image of persunaġġi Maltin who are still very much with us.
Take one Michelle Muscat, best known as a first-class swimmer of such prowess that time and distance warp and bend under her strokes. Last summer, for example, she managed to make an eight-kilometre swim look like a 14km swim. All with the help of the media, my dear, but that’s by the by.
The other day, she held a press conference in Birżebbuġa at which she made it known that she will be spearheading a swimathon to raise funds for the Marigold Foundation (which she still runs, apparently). It will take place in July and we’re all invited, against a €10 donation.
It so happens that this athlete is married to Joseph Muscat, who, lest we forget, so disgraced the top job that he had to resign – the only such case in the history of Malta and one that happened rather more recently than Victoria’s imperialist rule.
You would imagine that the Marigold Foundation might want to distance itself from such a liability: standard procedure, as Prince Andrew discovered in the Epstein case, for example. Makes sense, too, because the whole point of patronage is for public figures to lend dignity and visibility to worthy causes. When that dignity goes, they end up lending the opposite.
In Muscat’s case, dignity is the last thing that comes to mind. Visibility is the last thing you’d want. Or so you might think.
You’d be wrong. Take John Magro, kunserva magnate and a member of the board at the Marigold Foundation. Clearly he thinks that nothing lends gravitas to the foundation like standing next to the wife of a disgraced prime minister at a press conference. Nor did the press see anything wrong about the whole thing: for the most part, it was smiles and fawning all round.
There’s more. I’m very sure that crowds of people will show up on the day. They will be joined by all manner of persunaġġi Maltin and it will be a lovely day out with Queen Victoria at the beach. But then that was my point about our tolerance of monuments to the living.
Joseph Muscat was not at all disgraced. On the contrary, he sits on a pedestal that makes Queen Victoria’s look like a wobbly footstool- Mark Anthony Falzon
It may be quite unfair to pick on Michelle Muscat, because hers is just one of a whole herd of monuments. Joseph Muscat seemed perfectly at ease and jolly and fresh-faced last week when a journalist asked him about his part in the latest scandal (readers will forgive me but I can’t remember what it was).
Then again, why wouldn’t he be? He was on his way out of Parliament, where he still sits. He was ushered to a beautiful car by his driver, as would have been the case six months ago. He sees nothing wrong in giving advice to the prime minister, who sees nothing wrong in indulging in ‘the consultancy office of Dr Joseph Muscat’.
If Joseph Muscat’s name popped up in a trust barometer, his ratings would be right off the scale, as they were at the height of the crisis he created. In fact, I eat my words.
Muscat was not at all disgraced. On the contrary, he sits on a pedestal that makes Queen Victoria’s look like a wobbly footstool.
The Italians have a wonderful expression: come se niente fosse (‘as if nothing happened’). It sums things up perfectly.
This astonishing tolerance applies equally to many other monuments: lesser ones, maybe, but powerful symbols nonetheless. None of them concern people who lived thousands of miles away hundreds of years ago. Rather, the persunaġġi Maltin they glorify still affect our lives very directly, today.
I have in mind people like Alfred Grixti, the CEO of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services. It’s now two months since he suggested, publicly, that the government ought to sink the boats used by NGOs to rescue migrants in distress.
If Grixti were British and Victorian and a bit dead, the usual suspects would be out in force, calling for his monument to be recontextualised to Hastings Garden. But he’s none of those, which means that tolerance levels suddenly shoot up. Grixti was on telly last week, inaugurating new offices and chatting casually with the minister, a docile press in tow. Come se niente fosse.
What a waste of space – and I don’t mean the monuments.