The age of the untruth

It’s the age of the untruth; an era where it often feels like the truth is not only not required but is actively distorted. I think of some of the photos I’ve seen of local celebrities and I wonder how they can confidently post those pictures on social media knowing that they literally look like someone else. The worst part? Most people don’t seem to realise how far the photos are from the truth. It’s bad enough when it’s a photo of a face or a body that has been altered beyond recognition but when your standards commissioner rules that MPs are not bound by duty to tell the truth, you really have to wonder where we are as a society.

Wasteserv had filed a complaint against PN MP Claudette Buttigieg over claims about a proposed Magħtab incinerator. The Wasteserv CEO, Richard Bilocca, had argued that Buttigieg had misrepresented the environmental impact the proposed incinerator would have on towns within a six-kilometre radius. Buttigieg had said that the enviromental impact assessment had shown that an incinerator would bring with it adverse effects; however, the commissioner agreed with Bilocca that the research had shown the impact on these towns would be negligible.

The commissioner concluded that Buttigieg had “intentionally or otherwise, presented a false picture of the study”. The clincher comes here. Despite the damning conclusion that was reached, the commissioner said that ethics had not been breached because “the obligation of honesty is only found in the code of ethics for ministers”. Honestly (no pun intended), on reading this, my jaw hit the floor. When did the truth become optional?

I thought it went without saying that good, decent, democratic societies are built on honesty and integrity, and, yet, the longer I live in this world and the more I look at what is now considered to be civilised, the more I feel like we have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Honesty should be the compass by which bigger decisions are made- Anna Marie Galea

We are meant to hold MPs and people in power to higher standards than ourselves because they are able to influence so much but if our standards commissioner is indirectly saying that we, the electorate, are not owed the truth, then what message does that send to us?

I don’t give a fig about who said what  but I do care about being lied to and when the person who’s meant to protect my right to be told the truth dismisses this obligation by narrowly interpreting a code of conduct that, perhaps, needs to be revisited, too, it is nothing short of indecent.

I don’t want to live in a world where the truth is negotiable. We can argue and debate a million and one things but the truth is simply not up for grabs because it should be absolute. Honesty should be the compass by which bigger decisions are made, and, once you make it conditional or reduce it to mere opinion, then everything becomes blurry  and the foundations of the buildings start to shake. This is how regimes lay waste to once democratic countries. This is how dictators manage to persuade people to do the once unthinkable in their name.

Let us not let this get to the point where telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.