Malta’s Wednesday Whisper: How Today’s Letters to the Editor Just Changed the Island

Letters to the editor – September 25, 2025
By Hot Malta Staff

The Wednesday edition of Times of Malta lands on doorsteps still warm from the bakery van, and by 07:30 the Opinion pages are already being torn out and passed around in ħwienet, parish rectories, and university corridors. Today’s “Letters to the Editor” slot—exactly 17 missives, trimmed from a record 42 submissions—feels less like a quaint print ritual and more like the archipelago’s collective WhatsApp voice note, only with better spelling and the occasional Maltese proverb that makes you Google your own culture.

Under the headline “Stop Killing Our Night Sky”, retired physics teacher Ċensu Galea from Żurriea opens hostilities. He calculates that the new LED football stadium in his village is “spilling 1.8 million lumens over citrus orchards”, disorienting the threatened filfla shearwater. Within minutes, the letter is screenshot on 17 Facebook groups, including “Żurrieq Citrus Guardians” and “Birders Against Bad Lighting”. By noon, Environment Minister Miriam Dalli’s office issues a two-line reply on social media promising “a rapid lux audit”—a phrase no one knew they needed in 2025.

Across the page, 19-year-old Mcast student Kim Borg (she/her) from Gżira writes the shortest letter ever printed in the newspaper’s 170-year history: “Dear Editor, If rent controls don’t arrive before my 20th birthday, I’ll be blowing out candles in Berlin. Jqisni ħej.” The single sentence crashes the Times’ online comment section; #jqisniħej trends number one on Maltese Twitter, morphing into a farewell meme featuring suitcases shaped like the Maltese cross. Letting agents report three cancelled viewings by dinner.

In the print-only space, traditionalists still hold sway. Eighty-four-year-old Karmenu Zahra of Victoria handwrites a 400-word lament that Gozitan lace patterns are being copied by “Chinese robots on TikTok”. His letter, translated from the original Gozitan dialect, sparks a lace-off in the Citadel’s main square this Sunday, where octogenarians will sit beside Gen-Z influencers live-streaming bobbin tutorials. Gozo Tourism is already branding it “LaceTok Live”.

Perhaps the most politically charged entry comes from Fr. Joe Borg, the outspoken pastor who once compared over-development to “building the Tower of Babel with cheap Turkish marble”. Today he reframes the abortion debate using the island’s favourite import: avocados. “We ripen them in paper bags, not bin liners,” he writes, urging MPs to “handle conscience votes like we handle fruit—gently, in daylight, never in haste.” The analogy is condemned by both PL and PN whips as “irresponsible produce rhetoric”, but greengrocers report a 30 % spike in avocado sales; one Swieqi café has already renamed its toast “Conscience Special”.

Not every letter is fire. Some glow like the festa petards that light up August skies. Maria Cassar, 11, of Paola Primary thanks the stranger who returned her rabbit, Snowball, during last week’s thunderstorm. “Snowball is white like the President’s palace, but friendlier,” she writes. The President’s office invites Maria and Snowball for a garden visit; the photo-op will be soft power gold on Independence Day.

By evening, the letters have escaped the paper. On Bus 22 to Sliema, commuters quote them aloud; in the Għaqda tal-Malti classroom at Junior College, students dissect rhetorical devices; in a Valletta co-working hub, a start-up pivots to manufacture “dark-sky friendly” LED housings after reading Ċensu’s rant. The Times’ letters editor, Ramona Depares, says submissions have tripled since 2023. “Malta is talking to itself in 200-word bursts,” she laughs, waving a printout of Kim Borg’s letter now taped above her desk like a tiny eviction notice to the nation.

What makes today’s page so electric is not the individual grievances but the chorus: farmers, gamers, priests, teens, tourists, and tenants all speaking in the same italicised font. In a country where WhatsApp groups splinter into echo chambers, the letters page remains the last town square—no algorithm, no blue tick, just surname and village. You can’t mute ink.

The real impact will be measured in the coming weeks: whether the stadium dims its lights, whether rent freezes materialise, whether Gozitan lace outsells fast fashion. But already something subtler has happened. On a rock where everyone claims “they’re not being listened to”, 17 strangers proved someone is still listening—if only because the editor ran out of space.

Conclusion
Hold on to your copy; history shows today’s letters become tomorrow’s policy footnotes. And if you’ve got 200 words fermenting inside you after reading this, write them down. The deadline is midnight, and the island’s smallest parliament is still in session—right there on page 12.