PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE – do we expand our horizon or should we close out the world?

Malta and the world are changing and are changing rapidly. This is no new phenomenon, the difference being that the changes are at a faster rate than ever before.

The world changed when humanity instead of living in individual family structures began to live in communes; when animals were domesticated as a ready food supply to hunting and when agriculture produced vegetables and fruits instead of seeking wild roots and plants.

It changed again when firearms replaced arrows and lances; when steam replaced coal which had replaced wind power on ships; when the first automobiles replaced the horse and cart, when the first aircraft took to the air, when the atom was split, when the French revolted against authority and when workers bandied together and began pressing for their rights.

Time and tide wait for no man. This was illustrated by the Danish King Canute when the Vikings took Britain over in the distant past. His new subjects began regarding him as a God – and he set out to show them he was not a God.

He had them place his throne on the seashore when the tide was out and he sat in the throne. The sea tide began flowing in again and seawater covered his feet, his ankles, and his knees as he ordered it continually to stop. Of course it did not and when it reached his neck he left his throne and swam ashore.

He was after all an ordinary man.

One of the Leaders of the Nationalist Party, that is Adrian Delia, is slowly but gradually establishing himself as a King Canute trying to stop the tide. However, he well knows the tide of change cannot be stopped; he also knows that change creates resistance and is often unpopular among those who want “the old days” and those who believe the world should remain “as it was” when they were children.

These are regarded as “fundamental values” and harp on themes like “we must not lose our identity” and “we must not lose our Christian faith” and “we must not lose our family values”.

What Delia is doing is that he has found a niche to alarm and harp on the fears of people – his only alternative to a real tide that is continuing to amass the Labour Government’s majority standing.

Consider his position – a largely untenable one. As he has withdrawn his libel suits against Daphne Caruana Galizia, the sting of her allegations – whether true or not – continue to hover over him. He cannot ride on the Simon Busuttil bandwagon and that of others to politicise her murder to give them a measure of popularity despite the false transparency of such a stance with much evidence pointing the contrary for Delia, particularly after his screaming “either her or me”.

Over and above all this, not a minute passes without his being undermined by his “colleagues” and “buddies” who stand around him and smile and then stick knives in him.

His one and only weapon is to try and create alarmism – and so we have had a whole string of them; thousands of people hovering in poverty; people working long hours; people afraid to go out and locking themselves in their own homes, and now the latest – xenophobic alarmism - we are being invaded by foreigners, stop more foreigners coming in, we are losing our identity, our culture is threatened etc.

This was highlighted yesterday by an unusual show of unity by the PN, all its Deputies voting against the Embryo Freezing Bill through not accepting the march of science to help fertility for those deprived of it – even though a “free vote” had been promised by Delia. Busuttil typified this when he stated that if God and nature has not given you fertility – tough luck, even though later he tried to retract and swallow his pronouncement.

Let me just give Delia and his clique one example where this xenophobic alarmism falls apart. Over the years, St Paul’s Bay Primary School has become one of the most crowded in Malta, bursting at the seams with students in the Primary category, starting from Kinder.

It is estimated that almost 1,500 students attend this school, a school with children of no less than an estimated 45 nationalities, coming from all corners and all the continents in the world, comprising of different religions, different languages, different values and different cultures.

Are there daily revolutions at the school? Or perhaps continuous turmoil and fist fights; religious clashes; clashes of value?

Not in the least. The school is run by Ms Josette Dalmas, undoubtedly one of the best headmistresses in any school in Malta and Gozo, and her highly resourceful and coordinated staff of teachers.

Indeed, in some classes, Maltese children are in a minority! Internally, the school is carefully and assiduously blended together with Ms Dalmas’s personality boldly on the forefront. The only turmoil and chaos is external because of congested traffic in such a small space and the general confusion we invariably create because of our impatience.

This blend is greatly reflected throughout in many schools and work places and is not unique to Malta because nowadays most of the world is like that although some East European countries are trying to maintain the “Delia model of racial purity”.

Like King Canute’s tide, neither Delia nor anybody else for that matter, is going to prevent this change of tide flowing.

ALBERT JEROME FENECH