The president’s duty – Kristina Chetcuti
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Ġensna, a rock opera in Maltese. I’ve only acquainted myself to it lately. In the past, whenever I vaguely heard it playing, I always dismissed it as part of Dom Mintoff’s curated propaganda from the time when the British, who could take no more of his antics, upped sticks and took their navy elsewhere. Their departure in 1979 meant that many people previously employed with the Royal Navy, found themselves jobless. No matter: Mintoff quickly spun it as a classic ‘freedom’ moment. Freedom from what, is not exactly clear to me because Malta was by then not only independent but also a republic. But. I digress. The point I want to make is that my teenage daughter, knows the lyrics of Ġensna by heart. She first heard it last year when Repubblika (the NGO) used it as the soundtrack to a very powerful video about the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Now on her playlist, along with Dua Lipa, Jonas Brothers and Maroon 5, there’s Ġensna. She is not aware that this beautiful piece of music had been for decades appropriated by the Labour Party. Rather, she associates it with the fight to make Malta a corruption-free place. (And now she got us all...