illustration iella
The Whistle blower
22
U
p until a few weeks ago, campus appeared alight with election fever. It made me smile to walk through the Quad in the gorgeous spring sun, and be met with what looked like the best of campus life. There were giant bean bags, WiFi, and music playing. It felt good!
The turnout of voters in the ksu elections was dismal once again. But just in case you’re living under a rock, 1,808 votes were cast. If that represented a healthy percentage of the (apathetic!) student population, parking on campus would be a breeze.
Along with all this there were plenty of manifestos, posters, and four-sided signs on a stand: glossy, colourful, large, and useless, and so reminiscent of the billboards we see around general election time. It was borderline disturbing. This was all part of a student organisation’s electoral campaign (read: propaganda). The same campaign included, as one of its projects on re-election, the “installation of photovoltaic cells to provide students with electricity in the green area”. Very green indeed.
On an unrelated note (or is it?)
I’m not saying that the individual proposals are invalid, or wrong, or that no good work was accomplished by recent ksu teams, however, I cannot refrain from criticising those who contradict with their actions the very principles they claim to employ with their words. This inevitably leads me to the troubling thought that our ksu is the training circuit of one half of tomorrow’s politicians, because they need practice before they venture into the real playground, our Parliament. One might argue that, in the long term, if these fancy, highly expensive, and non-environment-friendly campaign tools result in the re-election of sdm then it’s a worthwhile investment. To that I would answer: that only holds if one makes the assumption that more good will result with sdm in office, as opposed to, say - horror of horrors - getting some fresh blood, some new minds, and daring voices. But clearly, that was not to be.
The Insiter • MAy 2011
On Sunday 10 April, the front page of one of Malta’s most prominent newspapers announced, “Malta ‘discriminating’ against same sex couples – Commission”. It went on to explain how the European Commission is pushing to ensure that the EU’s Freedom of Movement Directive is respected in all Member States, such that civil unions and marriages of couples, including same-sex couples, obtained in one Member State are respected in all the others. The Maltese politicians who actually did respond to this opened their mouths only to reassure us that this went against our ‘public policy’, and our representatives in the European Parliament would do their utmost to prevent this. How very wise. How very rational. Good-hearted, generous, love-thy-neighbour-as-thyself Catholic Malta, fanning the fire of bigotry, homophobia and festering ignorance. Whatever strays from the stagnant perception of what is familiar must be abnormal. This is the curse of the closed, and often brainwashed, mind. Just like children playing in a playground, they have not yet realised that they have a brain and should make use of it, for all our sakes.