‘Hawkers’ Articles at j’accuse

If you ever stopped to read the writing on Floriana’s Porte des Bombes (Heaven forbid that you did stop, it is after all in the middle of a main road) you would have read the inscription “Ad maiorem popoli comoditatem” which is latin for “For the greater comfort of the people”. The events of the past few weeks have led me to reflect whether our national efforts at public building is in fact heavily conditioned by what the people want. Most times we are busy adorning roundabouts with random decorations from phallic symbols to kitsch statuettes and cacti and luzzi. Those who had a taste of what passes for power on the island seem hell bent in dedicating memorials to themselves which explains a proliferation of busts and statues – which would be ok if we had a sense of proportion.

Gates though. That’s a tricky one. The history of City Gate also includes anecdotes as to how the main consideration in one of its reincarnations was that Carnival Floats should be able to pass through the entrance. One of the city of gentlemen’s entrances had to bow to the needs of the burlesque community. When a supposed architect was at the helm of the nation we could do no better than boxing in the main entrance with a series of shoddy arches, an arcade of libyan-arab shops and travel agencies and of course a housing estate. Ad maiorem popoli comoditatem indeed.

This time round the people are still trying to get their heads around the presence of a major architectural installation and plans. Most of the people fail to think with their own heads and come to their own conclusions. Instead, the Piano Plans have to bear with the fact that their genesis and development coincided with the first part of the Taghna Lkoll plan that involved the creation of a general sentiment of unhappiness and discontent. Let’s call it the Tort ta’ Gonzi phase. It was a phase in which anything remotely connectable to the government of the time was somehow deemed as wrong and almost as a punishment of the people. A couple of billboard personalities (ye old two dimensional figures) lent their faces to this quest and hey presto … the “Cheese Grater” and “Roofless Theater” were born.

Add to that pre-electoral schemings and promises to the hawkers of Valletta and the stage was set for the barbarians to take over the latest version of the gate. Have we improved much from the time when the prime consideration for a new gate was whether a carnival float could get through it? Not really. Our Prime Minister is adamant that there is nothing wrong with the location for the monti. This time he has reserved the populist decision to the look of the stalls but not to the location.

The sad thing is that this should never have been a decision of the people. Not in the case of the aesthetics and urban planning it isn’t. But this is Malta where the size of statues of saints and carnival floats will determine the width of the street, the height of the lampposts and the shape of a gate.

You would be worried if the barbarians had got to the gates. The thing is you look around you and you notice that they have been everywhere all along. It will only take a bit getting used to won’t it? After all under Taghna Lkoll, everything goes. You just have to be a little more optimist and a little less negative.

The internet side of the Maltese world seems to be unanimous in its disapproval of the design for the Monti stalls. Some government “perit” was commissioned to ‘design’ these stalls that will be placed in the open space between the new parliament building and the open theatre in Valletta. The designs had barely been announced ad urbi et orbi that everyone and his brother became an expert design critic and a fully qualified assessor for the use of materials in open spaces. You did not even have time to shake off the suspicion that much of the noise being made came from the same quarters who had only a while back massacred anything that was labelled Piano, the anger at the flimsy designs was an uncontrollable tsunami. It was so easy, it was (as the Italians would say) like shooting on the red cross.

Let’s face it, the whole “Monti in Parliament Square” business is yet another spin-off of Taghnalkollist policy. There is no longer an attempt to hide the way the monster (or if you insist, like Musumeci, you can call it a “Movement”) thinks. The hawkers – like the hunters, the speculators, the utility bill payers – had been promised summat in the run up to last election. Meanwhile, the City Gate project and anything to do with the rehabilitation and improvement of Valletta was seen as a Nationalist party heritage – and therefore something that could be metaphorically defecated upon with the bene placquit of the Prime Minister. As a little tag along there is the other fact that anything that incenses the Maltese electorate is a valid enough distraction and smokescreen from the real shit that is afflicting the Bowel Movement.

Piano’s plans were never at the heart of this government. It will reluctantly inaugurate each part as it is finished but we had already seen how – thanks to the strategic positioning of the Taghnalkollist style kiosks the steps on each side of the gate had already been downgraded a notch. We had already been told that the planned garden in the moat had to be abandoned for “lack of funds” (only to find out that the First Lady of the Taghna Lkoll Movement had sidelined the same amount of money to refurbish gardens in some Palazzo to host high teas). The Monti move is only the Taghnalkollist cherry on the cake. It is wrong on a number of levels:

It is an aesthetic blasphemy. It goes against everything that the Piano plans had for the entrance to Valletta. Where there is space let there be clutter.
It is yet another corollary of Taghnalkollism. A cluster of hawkers in obnoxious stands cluttering the entrance to Valletta are to Taghna Lkoll as Futurism was to Fascism. In this case there is no manifesto of artistic endeavour that is being followed – simply the mantra of “Ok Siehbi” (anything goes) combined with a middle finger raised to the whole Piano plan.
It also exalts a product that is anything but Maltese or traditional. Contrary to the belief of the few defenders of the plans to site the china-product peddlers in Parliament square, what is being sold is just as important a consideration. Fake football gears, bargain panties and iphone covers have no part to lay in a square that has been planned to be full of symbolism.
Which brings me to the damn cross. Wizards of hermeneutic studies have already pointed out that the red cross has nothing to do with the Knights or Maltese history. Should that have been the only beef then it would have been passable. The problem is that the shoddy thinking behind the whole design is so transparently poor of any cultural content (and yes, I do say this with a high brow attitude) that it is enough to make grown men cry (apparently some did).

In all probability Muscat believes that he is cocking a snook to all things and ideas nationalist by allowing a monster market to flourish at the foot of the majestic project that has risen at Valletta’s entrance. What he is actually doing is paving the way for yet another of the many living monuments to mediocrity that have been blessed by this government and its party of lackey appointees.

The Bowel Movement now has its own artistic trademark to proudly show off. All you need is to misappropriate and misrepresent anything that is wrongly or rightly considered part of the national cultural heritage, slap it onto tacky structures and give it the PM’s blessing. He may claim to not like the design (in a highly predictable u-turn move designed to make him sound ever so decisive) but he will bless the befouling of a monumental masterpiece because that, my friends, is what Taghna Lkoll is all about.

Illum il-pjazza tagħna u nagħmlu li rridu.

spread the word:

spread the word: