This article first appeared in Malta Today

Many moons ago when I was attending a secretarial course at what used to be known as the Polytechnic, we had an Accounts teacher who made it quite clear that he looked down on us with disdain.  For him, we were going to enter the working world as mere secretaries and would probably stay in that role forever, so these lectures were a waste of his precious time.  

More than once he would enter the classroom huffing and puffing, clearly bored out of his mind,  wondering out loud what ever possessed him to become a teacher and warning us to never enter the profession ourselves because it was the biggest mistake of his life.  Not that he thought we would ever amount to much, let alone become teachers; he voiced that opinion on more than one occasion as well.  In those days, most of us were quite deferential to authority and no one dared challenge his disrespectful attitude. 

To be honest, I found myself silently agreeing with him about his poor career choice – what was he doing in a profession which was so patently the wrong one for him?  Every week he would inflict his obvious ennui on us and we would stare back at him, sulking in silence, valiantly trying to learn something from someone who was there so begrudgingly.  It was as if he stomped in every day with an imaginary black cloud hovering over his head like in the famous Charlie Brown cartoon. Teachers who absolutely love their jobs can open the minds of their students, making them fall in love with the subject, but a bad, unhappy educator invariably has the opposite effect.   

My memory was jogged about this particular teacher this week when I heard the recording of the Culture Minister speaking disparagingly about artists during a conference organised by the “Malta Festival of Ideas”.   According to its FB page, this event “is an initiative by the Culture Directorate to facilitate and promote a platform for connectivity, innovative ideas, and the co-creation of durable and long-term solutions for a more harmonious and sustainable future.”  

The irony was not lost on anyone because the Minister spoke in a way which flies in the face of the very ethos of this Festival – rather than celebrating innovative ideas and creating harmony it was like he had deliberately turned on an icy cold shower to drown out all creative voices and cause chaos. Snidely commenting that artists consider themselves “God’s gift” is not conducive to fostering a good mutual relationship. Describing creativity as “presumptuous and dangerous” because that is what he was taught through the lens of a medical professional further compounds the problem of appointing the wrong person to this Ministry.  Suggesting that they should make enough money through ticket sales so they would not have to resort to public funds, shows just how out of touch he is with the reality in Malta.

I can understand that being thrust into a different field can require a period of adjustment and a learning curve, but for him to describe it as “traumatic” is a bit much – for a person who is so averse to the Arts, he found it surprisingly easy to become a drama queen. 

To say that his words rankled is to put it mildly. The justifiable anger of the artistic community and all those who believe in the Arts led to a call for the Minister’s resignation signed by 55 organisations and over 3000 creative professionals. In what is probably a first for Malta the majority of the cultural community were united on this, irrespective of their partisan beliefs. In response to the backlash the Minister now admits that he could have expressed himself better, but once you put people’s backs up in this way it is hard to reverse the clock.  When the person who is in charge of a sector which directly affects your work comes across as scornful, as if culture and the Arts are beneath him,  it does not augur well. 

Minister Agius Galea is a doctor by profession and previously he was the Parliamentary Secretary for Active Aging. This is not to say that doctors have to automatically be placed in health-related sectors, after all there are many in the medical field who have a keen appreciation of the Arts. But I think it was an error of judgement by the Prime Minister when he made his re-shuffle to appoint Agius Galea as Culture Minister, almost as a way of sidelining him, the result of which might be to the detriment of this sector. When you are handed a certain portfolio you have a choice to accept it or turn it down, but to accept it and then with one speech manage to alienate all the people you have to work with is nothing short of irresponsible and tactless. The PM also has to shoulder accountability for how he doles out the various ministries because it is his duty to put the best people in the right role. 

The first knee-jerk reaction from some quarters against the backlash was to mock all those in the performing arts, trying to belittle their efforts. This, in a country where local culture is often the last afterthought to be thrown scraps of funding, compared to the millions allotted to bringing foreign performers.  In fact, considering the comparatively meagre help from the state, I often marvel at the sheer richness of our Arts scene which despite all odds, continues to produce so many events to choose from, thanks to the dedication of those who do this on a part-time basis. 

Members of the public (aided by the usual spin doctors) who can only think in terms of their political allegiance want to portray this as some sort of vendetta against a Labour politician just for the hell of it.  Predictably, the calls of “Ibqa’ sod” (stay strong) have been ringing throughout this whole week as if this were some petty tug-of-war and the aim now is to not let the other side “win”. We don’t have a culture of resignations here when a Minister puts his foot in his mouth so spectacularly; unfortunately, it always ends up being a case of defiance because resigning is seen as a sign of weakness.   

Another puerile tactic by blinkered Labour diehards was to “make a note” of those who signed the petition to see if they were recipients of government funding. Really? Is that the kind of freedom of expression which the supposedly progressive Labour Party believes in?  Shut your mouth, don’t criticise or you won’t be given any funds. And, instead of focussing on how wrong the Minister was to say what he said, some chose to try and change the narrative by saying that the speech should never have been recorded and leaked to the media.  It is impossible to try and reason with this skewed rationale which goes to such great lengths to justify and protect whatever a politician does or says.  In fact, it further confirms how crucial it is for innovative ideas and critical thinking to be encouraged rather than squashed. 

What dismayed me the most about the Culture Minister’s speech was that he has no grasp of what it means to be an artist in the broad sense of the word.  Where would we be, after all, without creativity? We would be rendered into clinical anonymous robots who do not have the ability to express that which is often difficult to convey without painting, dance, song, music, dramatic and comedic performances and, of course, the written word, whether it is that of a poet or a novelist.  If he has no intention of resigning, as seems to be the case, the least he can do is to surround himself with knowledgeable people who can teach him a thing or two about the importance of culture for a nation to feed its soul . Being given this Ministry should not be seen as some sort of punishment and if he continues to view it in that way, much like that long ago teacher I had, he will go to his office every day with a black cloud over his head, and drag the rest of us down with him in his misery.