Points of view

Perspettivi/Perspectives

Editor: Alfred Sant Publisher: Horizons, 2012 Extent: 320 pp

Noel Grima This is yet another collection of Dr Alfred Sant’s articles after L-Impenn ghall-Bidla (1996), Malta’s European Challenge (1995), Confessions of a European Maltese (2003), and Malta u l-ewro/& the euro (2012).

Like the last-mentioned, it includes articles written in Maltese and also in English – hence the rather strange title, which is more easily understood in the graphic way it is presented.

Perhaps the most important essay it contains is the first one, which is also the only one which does not say where it was published. The only note to it says it was written in May 2009. I thought it was delivered at the President’s Forum on the same subject organised by President George Abela but I was wrong, it was not given at that conference.

It is written on the 60th anniversary of the Constitution and is a wide-ranging essay on what reforms should be made to upgrade the basic document of our State.

The problem as I see it is that one might have all the best ideas possible but what really matters is getting the whole nation to agree with the change. What really matters is the discussion among those who together can change the Constitution – ie the Members of Parliament.

Some of the articles are some he wrote for this paper while others are written for Orizzont or It-Torca. Among the latter I was glad to re-read the long series of articles the author wrote about his bout with cancer, a searing, warts and all account including the impact of this illness on a leader of the Opposition facing a difficult election facing as well the ugly face of a private matter being thrown to the public like a bone to a pack of dogs.

In some of his essays he ventures into areas we do not normally associate with him. One such area is religion. The second essay in the book is taken from a book, Hide and Seek: Reflections on Faith and Culture in Dialogue (published in Maltese in It-Torca in 2008-09) in which he compares three doctoral thesis submitted by three priests – (now bishop) George Frendo, Mgr Joe Vella Gauci and Bishop of Gozo Mario Grech.

The fact the three authors are priests must not hide the wide divergences – Bishop Frendo’s thesis was on Indissolubility and Divorce in the theology of 13th Century Scholastics; Bishop Grech’s was on the Harmonisation of the Religious and Civil Dimensions of Canonical Marriages in Malta while Mgr Vella Gauci’s regarded Islamic Law and Mixed Marriages in Malta.

An even more unusual subject is St Augustine of Hippo, about whom Dr Sant was asked to give a layman appreciation by the Augustinian Institute.

He also writes a layman’s appreciation of Dun (now St) Gorg Preca.

Dr Sant is on much surer ground when he writes about Maltese literature and its evolution from the 1960s to today. This is reflected in his roman fleuve Silg fuq Kemmuna. He also links his analysis with writers near him in ideology and friendship, like Frans Sammut (about who he also writes an appreciation), Pauline Miceli and Charles Flores.

Another essay is about Karmenu Vassallo and another about Anton Cassar.

With today’s controversies about highrises especially in Sliema it is uncanny to re-read an article he wrote for this paper in 2005 – Sliema the Ugly? In which he speaks about a gang-rape of Sliema. He writes from the perspective of a boy who was born and bred in a very different Sliema to the one we know today, a Sliema still very much under colonial rule.