Labour Website Head Endorses Peppi Azzopardi’s Peaceful Outdoor Tables Protest
Sandro Mangion, the editor of Labour’s news website The Journal and the former head of news at ONE TV, has endorsed Peppi Azzopardi’s silent protests against “exaggerated” al fresco dining arrangements.
“Peppi Azzopardi is right. Sometimes you need to challenge the system, without hurting anyone, when it favours those with plenty and leaves the rest of us with crumbs. Oftentimes words alone get us nowhere,” Mangion wrote.
Azzopardi told Lovin Malta that he often stages silent protests by sitting down at outdoor restaurant tables and refusing to order anything. He said that when a restaurant manager confronts him, he tells them that the table may be his but the street belongs to the public.
“His stance is a peaceful way of getting his message across that enough is enough,” Mangion wrote. “If more people get this message across, it won’t only reach the ears of that particular restaurateur but people further at the top.”
He recounted how he himself had placed a restaurant chair in the middle of the street when he spotted an elderly woman with a walking stick struggling to walk through a pavement that was completely blocked by tables and chairs.
He also shared a photo of himself, Azzopardi, and current judges Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff from the early 1990s when they were confronted by police officers for swimming in a bay that the PN government of the day had granted to a hotelier as a beach concession.
“If there is something that Peppi cannot be accused of, it’s inconsistency or of only speaking out under one government and not another.”
Would you join in a sit-in protest against exaggerated al fresco dining?
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