Illusivefreddy’s Weblog

After a long weekend away from work I finally ventured out of the house on Tuesday, and down into St Julians on my way to the office. As I approached the little square at Spinola I had to stop. The reason? The road before me had turned green, bottle green.

No this was nothing mysterious like some alien plant, aggressive grass growth or spillage from a Swarfega delivery truck. The entire road was half an inch thick with broken glass beer bottles.

This brings me to the reason for the long weekend off work. Malta has just had it’s general election. Big deal you may think and what’s so special about that, you may also think. Well the big deal is the way the whole island seemed to get caught up in election fever.

Leading up to the polling day there have been mass meetings, parades, roads blocked with flag waving traffic all blasting their horns in, what I expect is support for their political party. Then on Sunday after the voting was done the results came in. The existing government gets to stay in for another 5 year term. Suddenly the place went crazy. Parties were thrown in the streets, cars and trucks carrying beer swilling revellers were seen driving around the towns and villages. At one point a convertible came along the road where I live with no less than 20 drunken kids crammed into it waving flags and beeping the horn. A DJ was set up in the middle of the road in Spinola along with beer tents and excited bodies. The fun didn’t just last ’til the wee hours of Sunday morning but carried on all day Monday hence the reason for the broken bottles, beer cans, boxes and crates littering the streets. It was also the reason for my extra day off and the closure of other businesses and even banks.

In fact Spinola was not the only place. As I continued the journey to work on Tuesday hoping I didn’t get multiple punctures it became apparent that the same sort of mayhem had taken place all along the sea front round to Sliema.

Now I’m not criticising or saying its a bad thing. It seems to me that there are three things at play here. 1. The Maltese run high with emotions when it comes to their politics; 2. They give a damn about their politics; and 3. They don’t need much of an excuse for a party.

Personally I cannot vote on Malta because I’m Johnny Foreigner here and probably wouldn’t vote anyway because I have electile dysfunction and have always tended to be a floater (and I don’t mean the little poop bobbing around in the toilet bowl). A lot of my attitude in this respect comes from a background in the UK where hardly anyone bothers to vote because the parties are all the same; as bad and as sleazy as each other. In this regard people in Britain have something to learn from Malta. 1.Get emotionally involved in politics; 2.have a say with the vote; then 3. get rat arsed and legless afterward.