Protesters are finding that the clearing of the protest site in Great Siege Square, which used to be a daily affair with a sweep by Owen Bonnici’s employees in the dead of night, has now been upgraded to three or more times a day.
Just about as soon as you turn away from the site, someone comes to take away what is left behind.
We also noticed something else. Unlike the protesters, the sweepers — let’s call them that — are the type that does nothing for free.
Like raiders on a Viking ship, they are rewarded for their actions with the loot which they can carry.
Protesters have told me, people have come up right in front of them to take plants and flowers away from the protest site. And when challenged they say something from the schoolyard like “la sibtu barra, m’hu ta’ ħadd”.
I can only imagine what my wife would think if I showed up at home with flowers I picked up from some memorial. I think it would be a toss-up between a firing squad or hanging and quartering.
Consider this guy. The person filming had just walked away from the memorial where they left a candle. It had barely started flickering when the guy in the film went and picked it up. He didn’t bin it, which in a perverse way would have somehow given his vile act of cultural vandalism the veneer of selflessness.
Instead, he walked past the bin, put the candle in his bag and walked away.
Challenged to give back stolen property, he retorted with what has now become a standard. ‘That’s not a cemetery’.
And your point is?
It’s like talking to pebbles.
In the meantime, the protest continued after this genius left presumably to take the candle to the cemetery. Though sometimes I think they are reselling them to shops so we can buy them back.
Call it little man corruption.
