Rabat Is Next: The Franciscans Are Right

The Council of Europe does not send delegations to countries where the rule of law is flourishing. That is worth saying plainly, before anything else, because Malta's instinct — developed over decades of managing its international reputation — is to receive such visits with diplomatic grace and emit a press release about ongoing reforms. The Council's delegation will arrive "as soon as possible," produce a report within a year, and the government will have prepared its response before the ink is dry. I have watched this choreography before. What matters is not the visit. What matters is that it is happening at all.

But the story I want to tell sits not in Geneva or Strasbourg, it sits in Rabat — specifically in the metres of cobblestone between Ta' Ġieżu church and whatever catering platform a developer has decided belongs there. The Franciscans have said what needs saying: don't let Rabat follow Valletta. It is a short sentence carrying forty years of grief. Valletta did not fall overnight. It was commercialised in increments, each one reasonable in isolation, each one irreversible in accumulation. A restaurant here. A terrace there. A heritage facade with a cocktail menu behind it. The Knights built that city to last forever. We have been very efficient.

The friars at Ta' Ġieżu are not opposed to commerce. They are opposed to the logic that no space in Malta is too sacred to remain uncommercialized, and they are right to be. Rabat still has something Valletta has largely surrendered: the texture of ordinary Maltese life, layered over centuries, not yet scraped smooth for tourism. The Planning Authority will weigh the application. It will consider sight lines and traffic flow and economic contribution. It will probably not consider what is lost when the last quiet corner of a medieval town is turned into a hospitality platform. That calculation has never appeared on a planning form.

Meanwhile, TikTok has removed nine accounts operating as a coordinated fake-news network targeting Maltese voters — accounts pushing pro-Labour content ahead of the 2026 election. This should alarm both parties, though for different reasons. Labour should be alarmed that someone decided it needed the help. Alex Borg's PN should be alarmed that the information battlefield is already active and uneven. I do not know who built the network. I know that whoever did understood something about Maltese digital consumption that the political parties are still learning.

Three stories. One island. The Council of Europe watching from above, the friars watching from the street, and an algorithm watching all of it, deciding what voters believe. The delegation will file its report. The planning application will proceed. The fake accounts are gone, and the ones that replaced them are better at staying invisible. The next twelve months in Malta will be instructive — provided anyone is still paying attention to what is actually happening rather than to what is being performed.