Tribute to a great Maltese man

Five years have passed since Julian Manduca departed. He was so many things in his short life; a probing no holds barred journalist, an entrepreneur who sold Chinese balls and anarchist five pointed stars, a pioneer of green politics and AD founder, a great vegetarian cook, a radical activist with the grass root touch, a liberal humanist whose secular funeral summed it all, an organizer of alternative events and parties, a living testimony to cosmopolitan secular values... I remember meeting him 20 years ago, when he introduced me to beat poetry, the philosophy of dancing particles and bob Dylan's nasal voice. I wonder sometimes what he would make up of malta five years after he left. Surely he anticipated many things; the golf course u-turn, the havoc caused to our towns and villages after building heights were relaxed, the responsibility of the price club's directors to the their creditors and a slow but steady liberalization of social mores...Probably he would be disappointed at the slow pace of Europeanisation and the persistence of the political duopoly he abhorred...