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TRUTH IS OF NO COLOUR WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT SUNDAY • 11 SEPTEMBER 2022 • ISSUE 1193 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY maltatoday Homophobia is not 'cultural trait' Interest rate hike will make loans more expensive PAGES 6 & 7 11 takeaways from Malta's plan to safeguard environment PAGES 8 & 9 Going Green Money KURT SANSONE MARIO Pace is a broken man. He is the victim of a sweet-talk- ing young man whose promise of help turned out to be a toxic vortex of deceit and debt. Pace's story is intertwined with the fate of Terence Gialanze, the 'sweet-talking' 24-year-old, who went missing in 2012. Gialanze's disappearance remains a mys- tery and the magisterial inquiry remains open, 10 years down the line. But his victims contin- ue to suffer to this day. Pace, 60, was left fighting in court to save the house he lives in after being coaxed to put it up as collateral for Gialanze's debts. This story starts in 2011 when Pace received a bill for €5,000 from the authorities to re- deem the emphytheusis on his Marsaxlokk home. PAGE 2 Battling a missing man's legacy of lies and debt €1.95 Energy subsidies costing a conservative €400 million KURT SANSONE SUBSIDIES to keep the prices of electricity, LPG gas and fuels stable will be costing public cof- fers a whopping €400 million, a conservative estimate shows. The exercise carried out by MaltaToday is based on the number of dwellings and ex- cludes energy use by commercial entities, which would take the amount well beyond this mark. Government adopted a poli- cy of price stability in the wake of the energy crisis that has hit Europe as a result of the war in Ukraine. On the continent, electricity and fuel prices have soared, hitting families hard and forcing governments now to in- tervene heavily. PAGE 5 Maltese households saving €1,700 yearly, energy minister says Mario Pace was sweet-talked into putting up his house as a guarantee for Terence Gialanze's loans, only to be left fighting on his own after the 24-year-old mysteriously disappeared without trace in November 2012 Queen Elizabeth II loved visiting Malta, but a brief request to visit Villa Guardamangia during the 2005 CHOGM sent the prime minister's protocol team into panic. MaltaToday speaks to former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi and Joseph Zammit Tabona, Malta's former high commissioner to the UK, about their recollections on the Queen as Britain and the world pay homage to the 96-year-old monarch who died on 8 September. (Photo: JAMES BIANCHI) PAGES 10 & 11 LGBTI+ Gozo president Eman Borg Mercieca INTERVIEW MT2 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 SEPTEMBER 2022 COMMENT What are we skinning? The death of Queen Elizabeth II and its psychologically searing ef- fect on royalists everywhere… Malta included. Why are we skinning it? Be- cause it serves as the perfect synecdoche for our relation- ship to ancestral modes of pow- er, particularly the kinds which still retain a glittering, nostalgic allure like the British royal fam- ily, who still cake themselves in finery and jewels and even en- joy cultural currency through and acclaimed ongoing Netflix series. But surely the Netflix series has been marred by the ultimate spoiler now? Did familiarity with the overarching framing narrative hurt The Passion of the Christ's box office takings? No… certainly not in Mal- ta, where pretty much every schoolkid was carted off to watch a film which by all ac- counts was more graphic than even your average horror movie. In fact, such irrationali- ty also underlies Malta's endur- ing love for the royal family, I would say. How do you mean? Much like we hold onto our bequeathed Catholicism – arriving, appar- ently, with a shipwrecked St Paul and further validated by the Knights of Malta's celebrat- ed showing at the Great Siege – a lot of us still make a big deal of our membership in the Commonwealth. From the Pope to the Queen, we like to be seen forming part of that bejew- and to perform ongo- gene that made 'Irish Twitter' such a source of dark fun after the monarch's passing. This is true. But Maltese humour large- ly revels in punching down. Meaning? We tend to make a taboo out of poking fun at the powerful. Just look at the hordes of Maltese royalists who, going by their online proclama- tions and self-righteous tut-tut- ting, would have been keen to take a bullet for a Queen who not only hasn't held official jurisdiction over their country since 1974, but whose country has now also exited from the same pan-European setup we form part of. I guess it's reassuring to think that you're somehow associ- ated with the same class that gets to clasp at those blin- dingly shiny crown jewels on a regular basis. Yes, and it is precisely this instinct that un- derlies other irrational phe- nomena – such as the working class tendency to vote for reac- tionary, conservative parties. 'Please sir, may I join your club'? Yes. Because there can be miracles, when you believe. Do say: "For better or for worse, the reign of Queen Elizabeth II defined an era, if only for the fact that it went on and on for oh so very long. But that shouldn't preclude us from analysing either the minutiae of her reign nor the very notion of a contemporary monarchy which still reigns in this day and age… not least when it comes to homegrown royalists still reeling from a bad case of post-colonial syndrome." "Now's the perfect Queen's former Revisiting our rituals ANDREW AZZOPARDI PAGE 13 The Skinny Malta, shrunk down MICHAEL FALZON The honeymoon is over PAGE 7 No 156 – The Mourning Royalists Internationale JOSANNE CASSAR You don't have to be a Royalist to be touched by the Queen's death PAGE 6 EDITORIAL Fixing a broken planning system PAGE 2 SAVIOUR BALZAN Orgy and anarchy PAGE 5 People, now more than ever, tend to live the challenges they are facing on their own and cutting being cut off) from others enormous scars maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 SEPTEMBER 2022 CLASSIFIEDS & COMMERCIALS ARTS • TV • WHAT'S ON Luke Galea Markapaġna presenter "Life after finishing a PhD taught me that there's a lot of uncertainty, which I wasn't ready to deal with and face" maltatoday Get the critical perspective on politics, culture and society Be the first to enjoy our print newspaper with a subscription When you need to decode what politicians are saying, when you want to understand why Malta's crazy construction industry is impacting upon your life, when you need to step out of the social media and understand the world from a different perspective, our journalists and columnists will provide you with expert reporting, analysis and commentary. 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