The National Blight

Our Nation has suffered many an attack. Attacks that have left their mark on our society, landscape and our psyche. We have had the swine flu, we have had the weevils laying waste to our palm trees. We have had the Ottomans, the Italians and the Germans laying siege.

We have had the French and the British ‘occupations’, and some may say that we now have an influx of ‘foreigners’ in another form of invasion and occupation. This latter I do not consider to be a blight at all but rather a welcome boost to our otherwise dwindling numbers. As is our custom, welcome to Malta. We shall be your glad hosts.

One other blight is composed of Citizens such as us who however, believe that they are, unlike us, special. We might have the same amount of money in the bank, be owners of companies employing people, be successful in life, however we will be always different to these people who think and believe that they are special.

In the time of the Knights, they were the so called Maltese Nobility who were not Maltese at all. Thereafter, in the colonial times, they were the Italianate few who rightly so detested the English colonialists but integrated with them and took on their ways oblivious to the downtrodden masses in the villages and fields.

In these latter days they give an aura of being upright and standoffish, would rather speak English than Maltese, and still look down their nose at anything remotely Maltese. They feel uncomfortable in their own skins and toady up to anything foreign.

They are represented by a political party that still marches to their ‘religio et patria’ and embrace fascist methods in their power grabbing psyche. The fly in their ointment is the fact that we, as opposed to them, have moved on and wised up. We are no longer those farmers standing cap in hand and thumbing a deferential bow to the passing elite. We are no longer those poor citizens of our cities who fetched and carried and did all the dirty jobs for these so called elite.

Successive statesman such as Mintoff and Sant and now Muscat have enabled the Citizen to shed the long standing awe at someone who could write and read and converse in Italian and English, the awe at someone wearing a habit, the awe at someone with a ‘Dr’ preceding his name.

Muscat’s often quoted social mobility is crescendoing now and even through they resist admitting it, it is engulfing Maltese society. It is useless for them to pretend that they are still elite, that they are the natural leaders of our people, that they are right and that only them are right.

The Maltese commoner is now the major force in the country and no amount of feigned regality is going to stop him or her from overtaking the once elite and making a success of life.

This is what the PN and its most vociferous exponents have not yet realized. The sooner that they do and accept that their gold age has now waned and gone, the sooner we can as a Nation move on and achieve more for everyone.

The sooner they stop trying to drag us back to their comfort zone, the sooner we will be able to achieve more. The sooner they will stop being a clear and present danger to their and more importantly our Country.

The above is a guest post by Pluto