Once again in the news

Agriculture Minister Anton Refalo is once again in the news but, unfortunately, not for what he is achieving for our farmers. This time, we learned that Refalo’s wife acquired some €270,000 to develop a Yoga retreat in an ODZ Qala property.

It would be interesting to know if Refalo’s wife acquired the EU funds just because she happens to be the wife of a cabinet minister.

Let us not forget that, as far as we know, Refalo is still illegally keeping at his residence a precious artefact which dates back to the days of Queen Victoria and which is of historic value.

The lust for greed is never enough for certain people.  It seems that Prime Minister Robert Abela has too much to handle or can’t be bothered to see what his ministers are doing. Making hay while the sun shines.

Again, what about Police Commissioner Angelo Gafá? What is he doing about this case? Why is he so silent? On taking office, Gafá promised to apply the law equally to everyone.

The people have the right to know how the artefact ended up in Refalo’s residence. Being elected an MP or being made a minister in a Labour administration does not give anyone the right to take possession of public property.

These people are shameless!

EMILY BARBARO-SANT – Mosta

Malta’s five national holidays mark British severance

Twenty-five years after independence, in 1989, relieved of British impositions, the Maltese parliament, in total unison, elevated the memory of five socio-political events to national holidays. All of these occasions commemorate some aspect of the island’s resistance against or severance from British rule.

September 8 (1565) il-Vitorja is undoubtedly the longest revered; it served the Maltese, together with the eight-pointed cross, to delineate their own inherited identity in the face of British homogeneousness since 1800. In fact, it was established as a national holiday by the island’s first parliament in the 1920s.

Two small plaques in Maltese and English on Great Siege Road, on the bastions just outside Valletta. PHOTO: CHARLES XUEREB

The other four national events include Sette Giugno, in commemoration of the bloody demonstration against the British on June 7, 1919, independence’s legal disseverment on September 21, 1964, and the republic’s end of monarchy on December 13, 1974. The fifth is Freedom Day marking the end of British military bases on March 31, 1979.

I trust this information, lifted from my last book, should answer some of Albert Cilia-Vincenti’s probes, emanating from his colonial mindset.

What the correspondent terms as ‘praise’ is actually University of Malta’s pride in having an ever-increasing number of academics going public with their research in the media, as I strongly believe we all should.

If, unfortunately, like many in Malta, the correspondent finds reading a research book too daunting, may I recommend the most recent review, this time by Christian Keszthelyi of Decolonising the

Maltese mind, in search of identity, which appears in the latest valued university research magazine, Think, out on July 21 and distributed with compliments via newsagents. It will also be available online: https://thinkmagazine.mt/.

CHARLES XUEREB – Sliema