This is also Valletta tonight.
In the midst of all the glare, the noise, the stalinist rhetoric, the self-congratulation, the submissive adulation, the uniform compliance, the bonapartless bonapartism, the contracts, the nudges and the winks, the cross-party complicity, the historical revisionism, the memory-wiping, the forced smiles, the pretense that all is well when obviously all is not, there is burning as a dim candle in the dark one reminder that Valletta is a city that is populated by more than drones.
It may feel futile to compete with the spot-lights, the fireworks, the sanitised Christmas lights, the piercing camera lights and the mobile phone flashes. What light can a candle shine?
The light of survival. The light of truth.