To mark the sixth anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination, we are reproducing some of the articles she wrote for The Sunday Times of Malta.
This article appeared in the September 22, 1991 edition.
Yesterday's issue of Alternattiva carried an exclusive front-page story: Nikxfu l-Lista tal-Mazuni. The list itself was on page 3, a position normally associated with offensive material of an entirely different nature. I put on my spectacles, positioned myself by a window, and squinted at the names which were in letters of such minuscule proportions that had I been a few years older I would not have been able to read them at all.
With the aid of a magnifying glass, I counted 87 names, at the risk of bringing on a severe attack of migraine. I figured out only ten Maltese surnames, and two English surnames which nevertheless belong to Maltese nationals. The owners of three of those Maltese surnames have permanent addresses in countries other than Malta. Of those 87 names, therefore, only nine are Maltese nationals residing permanently here.
I was not particularly impressed by Alternattiva’s revelations. Do we have the right to hound Freemasons out of Christendom, to print lists of their names. together with their addresses, almost as if they were confirmed enemies of society: child rapists and convicted murderers?
The last time I came across a similar – incident a supposedly incriminating list of names and addresses – it was at the time of the Church schools crisis. Groups of parents had organised lessons in private houses for children whose normal schooling had been hit. Some bright spark, acting in the interests of freedom and democracy which were being undermined by reactionary forces in the form of worried parents, wrote out a list of those families hosting the underground lessons.
It was threatened that this list would be photocopied and scattered along the streets of Malta from the trucks more commonly used, at that time, to carry rather ugly men with a penchant for releasing the contents of their bladder immediately they recognised a simple landmark, like the Preluna Hotel, which told them they were in Sliema. The idea was that the “workers” (not blue collar, not white collar, just no collar at all) – many of whom did not know what a religious order was, still less a school – could desecrate the homes of these people for violating their fundamental right to have their own offspring taught by the nuns and priests they held in such disrespect.
The circumstances of the two cases are far from being the same, yet Alternattiva’s story begs the important question: why was the list of names released in the pages of their newspaper? Was it done in the interests of the public, or simply to satisfy that primal urge: uncontrollable curiosity about the skeletons in other people’s 18th Maltese credenze with marquetry work?
Had those nine Maltese names included, for example, that of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the head of the Armed Forces, the Commissioner of Police, the Chief Justice, or the Archbishop. then perhaps we would have had cause for concern and the news would have justly caused a sensation (emphasis on sensation). They are, however, just your ordinary John Citizens, going about their normal business by day, and flying out of windows at night, clad in an assortment of garments that ranges from dinner jackets, to black cloaks and aprons... (“And do you know, Guża. they worship the devil... they’re Satanists, they kill children, and they have non-Christian morals”).
The only name appearing on the list, and which may conceivably provoke some comment, is that of a British national who lives in Malta and who is the island’s foremost philanthropist. For many years both he and his wife have been the crutch on which several charitable institutions lean. We are now expected to run out into the street, clutching our stomachs, because we have seen that his name is on the list of members of the Masonic Lodge of St. John and St. Paul.
That list includes many high-ranking army officers (and many members of the Order of the British Empire), but they are all British and we should not be expected to express surprise at the fact that freemasonry is fairly widespread in the higher echelons of the British army. On the strength of that list, will the Maltese people now be expected to lodge (sorry, no pun) protests with the British government, insisting that it clean up its act? One can only stretch intolerance so far.
Psst, hi! Trid tixtri ftit whisky bl-irhis?
This does not follow as a logical step in a train of thought generated by the above piece, but merely what comes next in my pile of newspaper cuttings and scraps of old supermarket bills on which I have scribbled wild symbols optimistically called “notes”.
Magistrate Carol Peralta is lashing out at people who deal in stolen property. On sentencing a man to two years in prison for selling a stolen car stereo and a television set (not for stealing them, you understand, but for selling them when he knew they were stolen). Dr. Peralta said that it was alarming that thieves were finding a ready market for purloined objects.
Dr. Peralta is right. This is a decent country, with good Christian principles and decent standards which it strives to the death to maintain, but it also has one failing: it loves to get something on the cheap. If John Borg sees a pair of Levis 501s selling at the Monti for Lm5, and recognises them to be the genuine article (all red tags in place, etc.), no way will he lie down in Merchants Street to struggle with his Victorian conscience. He will simply snap out a fiver, snap up the jeans, and snap on the buttons to stride into Paceville that evening. It is not only the vendor (who has himself bought the goods from the thief) who is at fault, but the person at the end of the chain... the one who sees a car stereo selling for a laughable price and thinks “Oh good!”.
Our conscience works in mysterious ways. One of these is the ability to shut down part of the brain – that which lets us know what we are doing – while we hand over cash for goods that have arrived at a market stall by suspicious means. The other person has committed a sin (we still think in terms of sins, not crimes) by stealing it and selling it, but we have not sinned by buying it.
It has reached the stage where we no longer look at the vendor of stolen goods as a criminal. People who own village bars have a common story to tell, summed up in the above heading. Somebody comes along and offers them several crates of whisky at a tempting price. They refuse the offer, reasoning that it is risky to get involved for the sake of an increased profit margin… but they do not report the man who made the offer. (“Mela jien xi mignun”?).
Dumped
The Labour Party, if it is wise and really wishes to promote its new friendly green image, should avoid all incidents which hark the public memory back to the days when it was in government.
One such event was the dumping of building rubble, by Mtarfa residents led by the Leader of the Opposition, near the Housing Authority office in Floriana. These people had been much irked by the presence of this debris in their home environment, and incensed by government employees’ failure to pick it up after they had left it there. What did they do? They organised a hit (and miss) publicity squad, led by a prominent Labour MP and by the party’s leader.
The MP operated a mechanical shovel and loaded the rubble onto the back of a truck. At the risk of being called all sorts of offensive names. I will say that he looked very much the part and that he has now possibly found his calling. The truck was driven to Floriana, and there its load was revengefully dumped on the doorstep of those nasty Housing Authority people.
Most of us have moments when we feel like doing pretty much the same... if not to persons in government, or to the police, then at least to our neighbours. However, we do not. Something called civilisation, which gave rise to something else called the rule of law, has given people extraordinary inhibitions about giving unreserved vent to their feelings, and indulging in primeval behaviour.
I have never felt the slightest urge to rush over to the offices of Independence Print, Union Press and Alternattiva, there to indulge in a midnight pyromaniacal orgy. I am certain that this has never crossed the minds of all those other people who have, at one time or another, been hit at by a newspaper. Nor have the long-suffering residents of Sliema, who have been through much worse than the fussy people of Mtarfa ever thought of hijacking a convoy of cranes and operating the lot in unison outside the Minister’s office window.
Whether silent suffering pays dividends is debatable. This hardly means that we should all run riot with our basest instincts.
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