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The Maltese Herald
Olvin Vella

Maltese academics can’t ingratiate enough with the Labour Party

—

by

Mark Camilleri
in

Maltese academics are barely involved in civil society’s efforts to clean up the country and that’s because most of them prefer to spend their time ingratiating with the government and the Labour Party instead of participating in society’s relevant struggles.

Olvin Vella, a lecturer and the chairman of The National Council of the Maltese Language has welcomed the news that the government and Minister for Culture Owen Bonnici has created a new entity on top of the already existing Council. The Centre of Maltese Language whose remit seems to pair with that of the Council will be led by Norma Saliba, the recently fired head of news of TVM (the state broadcaster). You would expect academics to condemn such irregular government behaviour and blatant nepotism, but no. Here are the cringe-worthy comments of Olvin Vella:


Now, readers have to keep in mind that for the creation of The National Council of the Maltese Language; academics, writers and publishers had engaged in very lengthy discussions, mediations and negotiations before finally coming up with the formation of the Council. However, Minister for Culture Owen Bonnici simply invented a cultural entity to reward a job for one of Labour’s own propagandists. Olvin Vella is elated and he says he never watches the news, because apparently, this genius academic is the only person in Malta who doesn’t know that the state broadcaster is a partisan propaganda tool for the Party-in-government.

There were also extensive discussions once again about the Council of Maltese Language when Evarist Bartolo was Minister for Education and back then, as Executive Chairman of the National Book Council, I had proposed to increase the council’s composition by more industry stakeholders, namely publishers and authors to further democratise the Council. My original proposals were rejected and watered down significantly. Even at the National Book Council, my aim was to eventually further increase the autonomy of the entity to prevent partisan government interference.

Under Robert Abela’s administration, public culture entities are being used as Labour Party props to further Party interests. And what’s going on in public culture entities is also a reflection of the overall type of governance that we have. A future government would have to ensure to radically reform these entities so as not to make them susceptible of nepotism, cronyism and partisan interference.

Comments

  1. Banquo avatar
    Banquo

    What the Maltese language needs more than anything but seems nowhere in sight is a spell-checker that works with Microsoft Word and other word-processing applications. Having to consult a dictionary (or several, because quality varies) every time you have a doubt about how to spell something is very labour intensive, and makes writing in Maltese feel like something out of a previous century.

    It is useless creating ever more quangos unless somebody serious is going to create the tools that authors, workers, students and anyone else trying to produce some simple text in Maltese needs. The Maltese language desperately needs to be dragged into the 21st century but, despite lots of patriotic-sounding platitudes, nobody seems to care.

    We need an authoritative and frequently updated online dictionary, as well as a spell-checker. The money used to pay Norma Saliba and, no doubt, a whole new team of people “to work together for the Maltese language” could have gone towards creating these tools, and they could have been done by already existing bodies. Why not expand the remit, and put more funds into the hands of, il-Kunsill tal-Ilsien Malti, instead?

    As an aside, what kind of academic specialising in the Maltese language can afford not to watch the national broadcaster, which is where most Maltese people consume standardised Maltese? Is he not interested at all in how the Maltese language he is supposed to be working for is being pronounced, written, transmitted, re-invented and consumed on the most watched television channel in Malta? The mind boggles.

    On a final note, allow me to give a shout-out to Professor Vicki Ann Cremona. This post makes all academics sound like horrible suck-ups who live in an ivory tower, but Prof. Cremona is no such person. She is involved in civil society and she is doing her bit to clean up this country, so credit where it is due.

    Reply
  2. Kimura avatar
    Kimura

    Disgruntled Academics and Intellectuals from both side of the maltese political divide need to join forces and create the foundations for a new maltese political party. The nation has endured enough at the the hands of the old and current breed of inept and corrupt politicians. Malta urgently requires a new strong independent political force that is not manipulated by the business and criminal cabal that actually rules Malta.

    Reply
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