If you’re having a great Christmas, thank Jason Micallef. He valiantly stood up to “the Curia’s notary, the obsessed Robert Aquilina and his friends from the hate brigade” who, according to Micallef, were “coordinating an attack under any pretext to try and disrupt and ruin the Christmas atmosphere”. But we’re really lucky. We’ve got Jason.
“I, for one, will not let you destroy Christmas…,” the plucky Micallef warned the evil hate brigade.
Like his mythical Greek namesake, Micallef is a hero. His rousing words drove the Curia’s notary and his despicable friends out of the city, so the people could reclaim their Christmas cheer. “During Christmas, people should see joy and love, not agents of hatred like you,” Micallef told the hate brigade. He’s right.
That nasty Aquilina had the gall to attack Micallef’s Christmas tree. But Micallef was quick to confront him. He exposed Aquilina’s villainy: “Yesterday, they coordinated a relentless attack on the Christmas tree in Valletta through hateful comments.” How dare he, that evil Aquilina, relentlessly attack a Christmas tree with hateful comments? That poor tree must be devastated, must be emotionally depleted, psychologically destroyed. “The notary and his associates told us how ugly and filthy the Christmas tree is,” Micallef lamented.
Micallef wasn’t going to let some notary and his friends harm the Valletta Cultural Agency’s tree. “The tree honours Maltese traditions which are on the brink of being lost,” the heroic Micallef explained. That’s why the tree had a tacky fake Maltese stone balcony with an even tackier Maltese cross. That’s why his tree was studded with cheap louvered shutters and shoddy metal work.
Those “street lanterns were inspired by a poem by Maltese poet Anton Buttigieg”, the cultured Micallef explained. That’s why he put up all those hideous cheap lanterns on his tree.
But what really infuriated Micallef was that “people are mocking the work the [Valletta cultural] agency does”. That, for him, was “a personal campaign to disrupt Christmas”. These “people” are so ungrateful.
Well, on the other hand, that Christmas tree is truly ghastly. And it wasn’t just the Curia’s notary who pointed out that “they even converted a Christmas tree into a building”. Chamber of Architects president Andre Pizzuto commented “Merry Construction”. The Facebook group Belt Valletta called it “a block of apartments” and added “we celebrate... the sponsor” because of the shameless massive adverts for Labour’s favourite events company, TEC, at the bottom of the tree.
Thousands of comments lambasted the sheer awfulness of Micallef’s tree. One suggested that “they should replace the star with a crane – Malta’s true symbol”. Another summed it up succinctly – “awful from top to bottom”.
Micallef plonked what he claimed was a seven-storey Christmas tree – an unsightly monstrosity – bang at the entrance to Valletta. For Micallef, bigger is better – a Trumpian crowd-size type obsession. Except it wasn’t seven storeys at all – that was a lie.
Micallef then decorated it with a stone balcony, awkwardly jutting out, and multiple metal shutters and balconies, and a smattering of lanterns. Truly ugly, cheap and tacky – but costing us over €20,000, which Labour’s preferred supplier, TEC Ltd, duly collected.
We don’t expect any better from Micallef. He’s responsible for that other unsightly mess in front of parliament. His rustic dirty planters are completely out of place in front of Renzo Piano’s minimalist masterpiece. Piano designed the spaces in front and around parliament inside City Gate to frame open expanses.
Jason Micallef is damaging Valletta by imposing his tacky, tasteless decisions- Kevin Cassar
When a sculpture of the “four knights” was installed, Piano’s office objected. The city entrance, his office commented, is “too prominent a location for any kind of sculpture”, let alone for rustic planters. Antonio Belvedere, from the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, pointed out that the traditional sculpture jars with the clean, minimalist look of the redesigned City Gate. He hadn’t yet seen Micallef’s planters. He would have been apoplectic.
“The entrance to Valletta already contains a strong enough narrative and does not require further embellishment to achieve its impact,” Belvedere commented. “The entrance should be kept as an open space to be shared not to be occupied by this or that sculpture.” But our Micallef cluttered Piano’s clean open space with his cheap rustic planters, completely disregarding the scope of the design, totally wrecking Piano’s vision of a new cultural civic space.
Between Micallef’s horrid planters and Anġlu Farrugia’s steel barriers and the dirty broken lift, Piano’s masterpiece has been transformed into a rundown filthy dump. Micallef’s Christmas tree fits right in.
What was that about ‘Pajjiż ta’ kwalità (a country of quality)? You can’t have quality with Micallef.
Micallef has no place heading anything, let alone the cultural agency of the country’s historic capital city. He’s damaging Valletta by imposing his tacky, tasteless decisions. Micallef would burn down the great library of Alexandria and replace it with a flea market. And he’s harming the country with his vulgar vitriol.
The chairperson of the capital’s cultural agency should not be a divisive loudmouth who’s totally devoid of any cultural or historical appreciation or education. An unrefined rude bully should not be heading the Valletta Cultural Agency, especially not if he’s also a member of the executive of a political party or its special delegate.
The head of Valletta’s cultural agency should be an apolitical figure who does the whole country proud and not somebody who causes national embarrassment every time he opens his mouth. The chairperson should be a figure who enjoys respect across the board, both locally and internationally, for his deep understanding and knowledge of history and art – whether it’s architecture, sculpture, painting, music.
It should be somebody who is courteous, polite, respectful and enlightened.
Somebody who picks a fight over a Christmas tree should not be the VCA chairperson. Someone who resorts to foul-mouthed abuse over the mildest of criticism of the aesthetics of Christmas decorations has no place in public life.
Micallef is emblematic of Labour – an incompetent, rude amateur, completely out of his depth, who thinks he knows it all and who expects praise and gratitude for the devastation he inflicts on Valletta’s cultural heritage and on the honour of our country.
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.