Barriers Around Malta’s Parliament To Be Replaced With ‘New Security Measures’
The barriers surrounding Malta’s Parliament building are set to be removed and replaced with new, unspecified security measures, Speaker of the House of Representatives Anġlu Farrugia has confirmed.
This announcement, in an interview with Malta Daily, comes four years after the barriers were erected in response to fervent protests that followed the arrest of Yorgen Fenech in connection with the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Lovin Malta recently published a video urging the removal of the barriers.
They were set up as a safety measure after MPs were pelted with eggs and blocked from leaving Parliament by angry crowds protesting against the government in the wake of investigations into the murder of the journalist. In one particularly heated demonstration, protestors physically blocked all exits from Parliament, forcing government MPs to leave through an underground tunnel.
In his interview with Malta Daily, Farrugia pledged that the barriers will eventually be replaced with alternative security measures to both maintain safety and enhance accessibility.
However, these different security measures remain unknown.
The presence of the barriers is a point of controversial discussion, with some MPs requesting their removal. One local artist even used them in a public performative intervention intended to showcase the “fragility of democracy”.
“Thirty-six millimeter is a performative intervention where I placed my body on the barriers between the complexities of democracy, institution, state, public, and collective public memory,” Keit Bonnici told Lovin Malta last year.
Do you agree with the removal of the barriers?
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