Our country is small but breathtakingly beautiful. It is also blessed with other riches, not oil but the ingenuity and valour of its people. Unfortunately, unguided, this can result in brigands and bad-tempered babies.
Our ancient ancestors used our Christian heritage and some papal dispensation to plunder Muslim ships, taking all they could get their hands on.
These rich pickings for the few involved and their Order of St John overlords resulted in retaliative Ottoman attacks. The resultant enslaving of the whole of Gozo meant that many paid dearly for the short-term benefits and poor leadership of others.
Later, we upgraded from brigands to babies – happy to live under British rule, being protected from the bad guys next door (Hitler and Mussolini) and suck the colonial teat by repairing British ships and servicing their men.
However, our people bravely voted for independence, going against initial dreams of perpetual ‘babies-of-the-UK’ through integration.
Once independent, politicians recognised their meal ticket was the blind allegiance of an uninformed, poorly educated populace who could be won over by a charismatic, loud-mouthed rallying cry and a don’s promises of protection (substituting the UK teat with local one).
The dons themselves, however, needed cash to buy votes and favours – so they attached themselves to the builders (local or Jordanian). In return for promises of easy, cheap land deals (at the expense of our limited environment) and multiple unskilled (read desperate for work) labourers, a quid pro quo deal was struck, where the local big shots could fund the dons and their parties and guarantee a happy life for themselves at Fomm ir-Riħ.
To maintain subservience and dependence, little was ever done to improve education, unlike Finland. Education ministers from all administrations built new schools (and opened them – ‘zigarella’, TV crew and all) – or grouped old schools into ‘new’ colleges. They also protected kids by blocking doughnut sales without opening the same school grounds after hours for them to run in.
Never did education undergo serious revision to one that encouraged free thinking and critical analysis – that risked losing their devout unthinking hoards. Teachers were never upgraded to higher salaries and the respect they deserved as developers of our most important resource. This calculated laissez faire resulted in our familiar blue and red band clubs, blindly devoted tifosi ready to die for their don promising them a few more pennies from his bulging pockets. These people were uneducated to believe they will never amount to more than foot soldiers for their ‘kinks’.
Despite dalliances with Libya and China, our country progressed and voted to join the European Union, maybe for the love of our children – the only thing we Maltese love more than our dons. This club of independent nations – a kind of ‘League of Extraordinary Gentlewomen’ – allowed us to punch well above our weight and contribute to the continent we always felt part of.
Yet old tendencies raised their ugly head too soon. Astute leaders who were neither mature nor far-sighted, quickly pounced on an opportunity for a quick buck.
So, we plundered the EU from within, like hungry cuckoo chicks, offering a back-door entry into the gated community. Selling the use of the roof of your apartment complex to outsiders is clearly not the right way to ingratiate yourself to your neighbours. However, the lure of short-term cash seemed too embedded in the DNA of certain medieval brigands. The better the pirate, the further they sailed ‒ Montenegro, Dubai, maybe as far as Panama.
Once independent, politicians recognised their meal ticket was the blind allegiance of an uninformed, poorly educated populace- Pierre Schembri-Wismayer
Thus, had Malta descended into the hell of Mogadishu (minus obvious machine guns in the streets but with puppet police, etc). When Daphne Caruana Galizia tried to speak out against this, Mogadishu came closer and she was blown to pieces.
Lots of crocodile tears later, a new bodybuilding don took over, promising (of all things)… continuity. But the red foot soldiers thought who better to lead us than someone following the previous brigand ‘kink’. So, even among their own, rather than an intelligent scientist who, despite all gambetti helped this country in its crisis, they chose the petulant baby who waved their red flag the highest.
Not as astute as the ‘kink’ he followed, he served the same power masters (those twin Macbeth witches of lawlessness and greed). Thus, after briefly listening to Maltese experts and controlling the deadly COVID-19 plague better than all around us, he chose to believe in his own reality-bending mind (“il-mewġ fil-baħar”, “il-virus f’Malta mhuwiex b’saħħtu daqs postijiet ohra”) and sent his mekkanisms madame to inform the rest of the world that, unlike others, we were fully open for business.
Knowing the hands that fed him, he disregarded the health of the country, importing new cases of COVID-19 and totally destroying our hard-earned safety and all the possible local economy – LOL New Zealand.
The petulant cry baby did not think… he did not care for all who suffered due to his inept actions, more than 300 deaths, total disregard for the elderly, increased transmission when other countries are over the peak, no shutdowns. He followed his brigand ‘kink’ – kontinwità – stealing from the poor (including their lives) to give to the rich (mass events). All animals are equal but some are more equal than others. Initially, they still followed.
The purposefully uneducated followers necessarily accepted the don’s great wisdom, so, despite Maltese scientists and doctors saying “shut the airports, isolate, wear masks, etc”, Bob the Builder’s regular maskless appearance told them: “dawn x’jifhmu?”
So, masks stayed off and the plague spread and killed more. Being ex-colonials, we still looked to the ‘great white man’ (US, UK, Germany) to save us with their vaccines. Contrast the queuing for vaccines with the disregard of local specialists. Contrast mask-wearing Bob at EU meetings with locally.
What a sad lot we are!
Thank God for the internet – an alternate source of information to the mouthpieces of big brother, red or blue.
It is only when these mouthpieces are gone, when dons and ‘kinks’ have their funds audited, public and transparent to prevent bias from snivelling gangsters and when this people can think for and believe in themselves and theirs that our nation will have really grown up.
Pierre Schembri-Wismayer, Associate Professor, Department of Anatomy.