Back in the day when I was at Junior College (uh, three decades ago) I had Molière’s Le Misanthrope as part of my French syllabus. Teaching it was this Maltese Francophile full of savoir-faire. I can still see her sitting cross legged on the desk, in that effortless chic-but-casual style, her long dishevelled hair to the side, reading bits of the play out loud in an authentic French accent that I could not for the life of me understand but which, notwithstanding, made me nod and go oh là là, bravo!
She was the closest I had been to France till then and I was in thrall, which meant that I loved Molière and I equally loved Alceste, his main character in the Misanthrope satire. Alceste – the misanthrope – is a 17th-century outspoken French gentleman disgusted with the superficiality and hypocrisy of society. By way of contradiction, for someone who disliked humankind so much, he falls in love with the frivolous flirt and social climber Célimène but his love is not requited. The play concludes with Alceste ending up ostracised for being “unfashionably sincere”.
Why am I talking about this, this morning? Principally because I am, as I type, eating a pain au chocolat from Le Grenier (an oasis of Frenchness in Malta) and secondly, because, well, Molière has been in the news.
France, like us, is in the throes of an election campaign, with the countdown in mid-April. And, last week, the two main presidential candidates – Emmanuel Macron and Valérie Pécresse – locked horns over the country’s greatest playwright.
Pécresse, the centre-right EPP candidate, took a swipe at Élysée-incumbent Macron for failing to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Molière’s birth. “Zut alors! Youz doz not wantz to promote French culture, oui,” she more or less told him.
Macron was said to have been irritated. He prides himself as being a well-read politician. In 2014, when he was still economy minister, he was challenged by a television journalist to learn the part of Alceste in The Misanthrope in a week. His reply? “Ah baoui, I knowz itz already” and started reeling off the rhyming verses there and then.
Really, this is just a little snapshot which shows that, for the French, nothing beats culture. A culture minister in France has almost pop star following.
A fair and just society with constituents concerned only with the common good comes from having political parties leading by example- Kristina Chetcuti
By contrast, in Malta, the MP who gets the culture portfolio is the one who is not the flavour of the party. Culture is an aside, an afterthought and cultural education is deemed as ‘elitist’. Maybe ministers here can reel off the lyrics of Ġensna and Ma tagħmlu xejn mal-Perit Mintoff but that’s about it.
Indeed, there are no culture wars in the Maltese electoral campaign debate; instead, at the moment we’re debating the woes of exchanging favours for votes. Labour MP Oliver Scicluna was so miffed about his door-knocking experience that he took to Facebook, offended that his constituents want to part exchange their votes.
I am in total agreement with him, of course. But maybe he needs to take off his rose-tinted glasses and dig deeper into why people do that, rather than resort to puerile remarks in parliament such as: “When I was young, I remember PN governments buying votes with favours.”
After all, he does not need to go far back into his childhood. Five years would be enough. In 2017, his own Labour government blatantly bought votes with favours. I know this first hand because I used to be at the receiving end of innumerable calls from people wanting to confirm “if Simon Busuttil [my SO and then opposition leader] will guarantee to give us what we have been promised by Labour if he’s elected”.
I had a notebook by the phone for the requests. “Labour has [insert]: paid my overdue VAT/paid my utilities bills/sent me a €7,000 cheque/paid for a private home for my elderly father/given me a flat with a sea view in the new housing estate/painted a ‘disabled’ parking place in front of my house for my new Toyota Turbocharge/etcetera.” Our jaws were permanently stuck in the shape of the “unfashionably sincere” ‘no’.
Mind, these extravagant favours were not being offered by some random MP but they were being handed out from the Labour Party kwartieri. Even my kunjati used to get a regular call to the likes of “Sinjura, qed inċemplu mill-Partit Laburista, nistgħu naqduk f’xi ħaġa?”
Therefore, to sum up, it’s brilliant that Scicluna wants to change the favours-culture, after all, he has already managed to move mountains when it came to rights for people with disability. But, surely, he understands that a fair and just society with constituents concerned only with the common good, as opposed to individual needs, comes from having political parties leading by example.
For this reason, I suggest that he first takes a close look at the very party he belongs to. He’ll find nothing but – to quote Alceste – “base flattery, injustice, self-interest, deceit and roguery”. Before pointing fingers at the PN or at the constituents who ask for favours, Scicluna has to work on change and a clean-up within his own home. Only then will we be able to nod and go oh là là, bravo!