There is this wonderful ‘do first and ask for permission later’ thing that is sweeping our ministries and islands as a whole. Armed with the knowledge that things take forever to be processed by our courts and the hope that many either will not notice or care, ministers treat their assigned departments like little fiefdoms of which they are lord and king. When their unapproved and, therefore, illegal plans are discovered, no justifications or apologies are usually given; instead, they wait a few days for our gaze to be diverted to another scandal.

I am often reminded of the philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? But the Ian Borg undertones in that question are usually too black for even me to bear, so I just do not entertain it.

It is an age of misinformation and misreading. People do not read articles in newspapers but instead, get offended by captions taken out of context. They comment first and research later. Pictures elicit thousands of words, many of which have nothing to do with the subject itself. Apologies are either non-existent or non-substantial. The fact that our feeds disappear so quickly and get updated so fast makes us feel like words are impermanent. And if words do not matter, then the execution of them matters even less.

It would beggar all belief if there were any belief left- Anna Marie Galea

It has been more than a year since Miriam Pace’s tragic, irresponsible and unnecessary death. Like many of the people reading this article, I have come across the heart-rending offerings of her widowed husband: frozen monuments to a beloved life ripped away in a cloud of dust and rubble. Like many, I wanted justice for her.

I wanted our laws to reflect the stain that such a loss should leave on a country choked by greed. But more than anything, I wanted our politicians to show us that their many honeyed words in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy mattered. To say that my hope was little more than a fool’s errand is the grossest understatement of the year.

You see, this week it was revealed that Infrastructure Malta awarded a contract worth over €1 million to the contractor linked to the building collapse that caused Miriam’s death. This means that, while her husband was inconsolable and our politicians were offering their condolences and promising that justice would be served with one hand, the green light was being given for new projects with the other. All this while the contractor is being subjected to criminal proceedings; it would beggar all belief if there were any belief left.

Imagine being under investigation for a crime that the whole country knows about and just going about on your merry way as if you have not involuntarily taken a woman’s life. But then again, why should I be surprised? It has been more than two years since Lassana Cisse was shot down for what appears to be sport and the alleged perpetrators are still out on bail. When it comes to impunity, consistency is key.

But perhaps the greatest fool’s errand of them all is me and a precious few others trying to have this kind of conversation every week. If a song contest appears to matter more to an entire population than injustice, what more can one say? Perhaps that in itself is what keeps driving us, after all: the belief that just because a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it doesn’t mean that we should act like it didn’t.