[WATCH] ‘We need to clean out the shit and build a new Republic’

‘We need to clean out the shit and build a new Republic’

They met on the ‘piazza of power’, as the writer Immanuel Mifsud aptly described it: socialists, progressives, and greens joined together in a call to arms to “clean out the shit and build a new Malta.”

Andre Callus, activist for the left-wing NGO Graffitti, led proceedings on Castille Square where artists, writers, politicians, and activists who were on the forefront of Malta’s environment and social justice battles, put forward a challenge to Malta’s two-party system.

“We have now witnessed the marriage of politics and big business and the capture of our state and resources… we know there are thousands of Labour voters who are betrayed, who identify themselves with socialist and progressive values, people who only a few weeks ago believed in the people leading the country, now only learning they were just tending to their personal interests and their friends in big business.”

Callus said he understood the difficulty of those who feared expressing their opinion for fear of being pigeon-holed. “Today is the time for courage… let’s see that from this something positive can happen, to clean out the shit… today should be about the desire for a new country, a country where social justice reigns, we want a Malta that is not led by a big business clique, but a just Malta.”

The writer Immanuel Mifsud’s elegant yet deadly dispatch of the Muscat’s “failed neoliberal experience” took aim at Labour’s ‘best of times’ slogan.

“This country is at war with itself – not just because it has two cruel tribes, but because it wants to remove every single tree, fill every space with concrete, sometimes it hates blacks and wants to shoot every bird… no we’re not living ‘the best of times’, because not everyone was eating from the same plate or sitting at the same table.

“The neoliberal experience did not work… the people wanted to wear those polo shirts with the horse jockey which those in power like, but they realised those shirts didn’t really fit them.”

Other contributions came from anti-poverty campaigner Matthew Borg, academic and womens rights campaigner Andrea Dibben, and the writer Wayne Flask.

“We need to stand up to those who want to call socialism a disease,” Flask said. “The events of this week are not the fruit of socialism, but of people’s greed… the fight must continue against the barons and ‘friends of friends’, those who were once enemies but became insiders, who said the political parties were just like supermarkets, against those who give underhand donations and pay party salaries, against those who get public land for free and those who feel they are above the law.”

The environmental NGO Friends of the Earth yesterday also said that while the group did not always agree with the agenda of controversial journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia or her “idea of ‘normality’, especially when fellow members and colleagues were directly targeted by her blog”, her relentless reporting on corruption and links to the international financial and criminal worlds “were the only voice that detailed the murky reality our country is currently in.”

“The connections that companies like Tumas Group, Gasan, db Group and others have with people in power and elected officials should not be taken lightly – these links now show clearly, more than ever before, why Malta is looking like a concrete jungle and hence why large-scale projects such as the db Tower, the Quad, the Malta-Gozo tunnel and other such projects are being pushed forward without following legal and planning processes and procedures.”

FoE said Malta could have no environmental justice without proper and fair democratic institutions and structures. “This is the right time for people to say no for the many decades of having politicians from both PN and PL parties in government who have rolled the red carpet to dubious tycoons, autocratic leaders and tax evaders. The value systems brought about by politicians and their ‘as long as the economy is fine anything goes’ mantra have now led to some of the biggest environmental and social injustices suffered by the country.”

FoE called for all national institutions to be freed from political manipulation and serve the public interest. “All large tenders and planning applications that were dished out over the past years must be investigated by an independent authority. We demand that national services such as the power station are renationalized in the interest of the general public.”