I am writing this after I’ve had the longest cotton buds in the world inserted in each of my nostrils. When the sticks reached my inner eyeballs, they were swiftly pulled back out and packed in a sealed plastic bag, leaving me feeling like I had dived in the Dead Sea and forgot to hold my nose. I am now in quarantine, waiting for the COVID-19 test results.
No, I have not been to an MTA mega-party, or to a hotel pool party or to a marċ tal-festa; I have no symptoms nor have I been traced. I have to stay in isolation for 15 days because, for family reasons, I had to travel to another country.
And because I happen to come from Malta, the government of this host country has flashed me the red COVID card. You say ‘Malta’ and people immediately shrink back, like I’m about to strip off my masks and breathe heavily-infected COVID aerosols in their faces.
We are the danger zone piranhas of Europe, right there on top with Spain. But unlike Spain, which has been terribly unlucky since March with an unabating flood of COVID-19 cases, we joined the worst spot in summer. In fact, right up till May, the World Health Organisation was using us as an exemplary country which managed to keep the number as low as possible.
Now, no matter how much we arrange our faces into simpering smiles and assure people that we have protocols and more protocols, or even encourage them to come jogging with us, foreign offices simply tell us to stay away.
Why? What happened somewhere along the way? The prime minister’s love for summer happened, that’s what.
Couldn’t he have targeted, say, foreign families emerging from lockdown, pale and eager to bring their children to a spot of sun and sand with a bit of culture?- Kristina Chetcuti
Robert Abela is very much a summer man. He pooh-poohed any possibility of a second wave of the virus after springtime: “waves are only in the sea”. Nothing was going to stop him from enjoying summer like he always does, not even the trifle matter of him being the country’s chief.
Abela spends his summers on a boat. Not a luzzu or a rowing boat or a sailing boat – none of the kind where he floats wherever the wind takes him and use the time to ponder on life. Oh no. From a young age, Abela’s preferred mode of sea craft was the speedboat. He would be recognisable from a mile away – driving so fast and furious that he and his boat would be 90 degrees perpendicular to the sea. It was a matter of now you see him, now you don’t. The ensuing crashing waves would make boaters on their small ribs cling on to the sides of their boat. “What was that?” someone would ask. “A bird? A plane?” and the reply would be: “Nah, it’s Bobby bobbing”.
Over the years (and direct contracts), his boats kept getting bigger and the engines more and more powerful.
Of course, good luck to him, albeit, a bit of sea manners would not have gone amiss. However, now, his boating has become of concern to us all because it’s clear that he adopts the same gass mal-pjanċa [pedal to the metal] approach to administer Malta.
Off he goes speeding away to Sicily every weekend, throwing caution to the wind, giving full throttle instructions to promote Malta as the place for mass parties – and leaving us all perplexed, trying to hold on for our lives.
Had he been a pondering sailor, he would have perhaps looked at kickstarting the economy engine more sensibly. It’s uncontested that he needed to open airports – there’s so much an island of our size can sustain completely cut off; and, of course, Malta was in desperate need of tourists. But couldn’t Abela have promoted the quiet life of the island for example?
Couldn’t he have targeted, say, foreign families emerging from lockdown, pale and eager to bring their children to a spot of sun and sand with a bit of culture? Couldn’t he have sent a simpering tourism minister to welcome these families to restaurants and hotels – people who stay in their own little bubbles with minimal possibility of contagion – instead of thousands of revellers rubbing viruses against each other?
No, Abela, as the speedboat driver that he is, is myopic. He wanted the money and he wanted to make it now; a steady trickle of income is not something he can conceive of.
At the time of writing this, Malta had Europe’s second-highest case rates.
“Chill,” said the prime minister, without an ounce of empathy to those who lost a loved one to COVID, “What’s the fuss? Malta’s cases are all mild.” Ah, he tried to invoke that favourite hobby of ours, that Malta is the chosen island of the Gods.
But none would buy it – not even his Super One followers. Because everyone realised that high rates of cases have major repercussions: on overworked doctors and nurses; on the vulnerable who end up locked in because if they get it, then they’ve had it; on those who have to travel for work or family; and on children and the hanging question of whether schools will open.
The worst effect is on tourism – who wants to holiday with us anymore when they’ll have to quarantine when they go back home?
Malta absolutely cannot afford this chain reaction.
When will the prime minister berth his boat and finally acknowledge his irresponsibility?
When will he realise that unlike him, we haven’t been taking spinning classes and cruising the Med safe in the knowledge that the taxpayer will pay our salary at the end of the month? Instead, we’ve been taking COVID tests and staying away from people, worrying about work and income.
Mostly we’ve been waiting for the prime minister to stop bobbing and start working to get us out of the red zone. Now.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti