Most of the over-populated and over-touristic sites around the world are beginning to have enough. Venice, Amsterdam, Rome, Machu Picchu, Everest, Lisbon, Kyoto Cherry Blossom Parks and Fujiyama, Dubrovnik and, now, the Canary Islands are revolting.
The local populations have nothing against tourism since it is one of the mainstays of the local economies. They are protesting over too much tourism. Too many hotels sprouting up, too many airbnbs forcing locals to move out as rental prices rise.
Too much noise, too much loss of shops serving the locals being replaced by souvenirs, fast-food, rubbish pseudo local restaurants, tables and chairs taking over all public places, too many large cruise liners killing the local underwater life and causing pulmonary diseases by their use of heavy fuel.
Locals have had enough of the excess.
Their hospitals cannot cope, their roads are overloaded, their businessmen do not care for anything local – they are all afflicted by the international disease called greed.
Is Malta any different? We are exactly in the same situation as all these other places. Yet, we do not protest enough. Why?
Is it due to our national psyche, nurtured by thousands of years of domination by outside forces more powerful than anything the local population could ever muster in their own defence? We were always kept out of the palaces of our overlords, outside the military areas earmarked and closed off to locals.
Our new overlords are no longer foreign masters. They are local and even more bloodsucking than previous foreign masters. Because, instead of trying to educate us as the British did, or to build and decorate our cities and towns with lovely churches and palazzos as the Knights did, our new masters uglify our tiny country with their horrible chickencoop blocks that take over all seafronts and now even countryside areas.
Permits are always issued by the authorities because money is flowing behind the scenes.
Cannot we take examples from sister islands like the Canaries or beautiful World Heritage Sites like Venice to protest and ask for a reduction of the numbers and increases in prices to bring fewer but better paying tourists to our shores?
Amsterdam has banned the building of all new hotels. Venice has forbidden cruise liners to enter the Grand Canal and has introduced a daily fee for day trippers coming from the liners or from the buses.
The Canary Islands want to force their politicians to reduce the numbers of tourists per year from the six-to-one ratio of tourists versus local residents, bringing this down to a more balanced figure.
We need increases in prices to bring fewer but better paying tourists to our shores- John Vassallo
And what do we do? We also have a six-to-one ratio of over three million tourists a year for a local Maltese population of 400,000. I do not count the 150,000 foreign workers who are in Malta temporarily, who have no vote and would leave if we reduce the overload.
We also have an overdose of hotels being built and too many oversized cruise liners spewing heavy diesel fumes across Floriana, Valletta, Marsa and the Three Cities; a ‘cancer factory’, as Joseph Muscat said, killing the south where the Labour Party gets most of its votes.
And, apart from some protests with small numbers of activists fighting for the trees in Mosta and Marsalforn, and the stickers “no pavements no votes” across Malta to fight the coffee shops, restaurants and gathering spots across the Gżira, Sliema, St Julian’s, Marsascala and Valletta pavements, there is no national uprising yet.
It is time for the comfortable lazy yet grumbling middle classes around Malta to wake up.
We need to hold another Xebbajtuna protest, bringing thousands out of the comfort of their armchairs and sofas to make it clear to one and all that Malta and Gozo have had enough.
We need a moratorium on all building permits, we need to inspect all building sites to check each and every contractor and site worker for proper permits, building knowledge, financing and money laundering in the building industry.
We need to set a numerus clausus on the number of tourists who pay less than the full cost for their week in Malta. Airbnbs must be banned in town and village centres. Tables and chairs outside catering establishments should not exceed 10 per cent of the number of tables the establishment has inside.
A restaurant or coffee shop seating 50 inside should only have place for five persons outside. This would liberate our pavements and parking places and still allow outside seating in a decent manner.
All music is to be played only inside premises.
Most of all, we should wake up and mobilise masses to protest and to vote in June for the local and European Parliament elections against the present government, since they are the cause of the absolute mess we find ourselves in.
In the 1980s, we had arisen and got rid of the terrible Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici government. We can do it again but we must all awaken before it is too late.
John Vassallo is a former ambassador to the EU.