And so it was that, last week, the daughter and I found ourselves on a boat on the river Thames surrounded by about 150 London schoolchildren on a scorching sunny day. Both of us history buffs, we were finally redeeming pre-COVID tickets for a Horrible Histories show.
It was a two-person act: one playing the ‘teacher’, giving the audience a poo-free version of history, and the other playing the ‘student’, who supplied us with the gruesome-est facts on historic buildings as we chugged up and down the Thames.
The highlight of the act came as we passed by St Thomas’s Hospital, where the script went something like this:
Teacher: “And on your right you see St Thomas’s Hospital… when our Prime Minister Boris Johnson had COVID, he stayed here until he got better.”
Student: “That’s not true! He did not get better!”
Teacher: “Yes of course he did”
Student: “No, he is still the worst prime minister ever!”
And reader, never have I been on a boat which rocked like that – with laughter. It felt like all the eight- to 11-year-old students, from different schools, had been suddenly given a dose of Red Bull: they jumped up and down, simultaneously booing and laughing at Johnson.
I’m telling you, if he had opened his parliamentary office window and chanced upon this scene, I am 100 per cent sure that he’d have resigned on the spot. Because, let’s face it, if even children think you’re utterly ridiculous, then there’s no saving grace.
It was a delight to witness this spirit of pure freedom of speech; exercised by both the actors and the young audience. In all my life I have never seen children so engaged in politics and it was very clear, from their excited chattering after this stint, that politics is discussed at home and that these children were very much aware of all the parties their prime minister was having during lockdown, while they were stuck at home.
Can you just imagine if that scene had to be replicated in Malta with a jibe at our prime minister? The steely silence would have torn through the hull of the boat followed by “Mzzz! Mhux sew igħidulhom hekk lit-tfal!”.
It is chilling how much we self-censor and gag ourselves. It’s not just the children, it’s each and every one of us, including the opposition, which, bizarrely, these days seems to believe that its job is to oppose NGOs and Repubblika and not the government.
It is chilling how much we self-censor and gag ourselves- Kristina Chetcuti
Look at us: not only do we not boo at our immoral and unprincipled politicians; we repeatedly applaud them. We actually allow corrupt machinations to rehabilitate people like the disgraced Joseph Muscat and like that pathetic puppet Peter Grech, back to power, despite them having papered over unprecedented corruption and criminal activity. All mafia and nary a hoot from us.
How has it come to this?
Graffitti’s frontman, Andre Callus has been repeatedly urging people to speak up and stand up: “You have to unleash anger to get change.” On similar lines, retiring chief justice Joseph Said Pullicino urged students to “wake up from their lethargy and challenge the abuse of power and corruption” and not to remain silent for fear of “missing out on the gravy train”.
Alas, you can’t press a push button for anger and action. There is no button for that when there is no concept of the common good. Our islands psyche is driven by amoral familism: we are solely interested in the economic interests of the nuclear family (vide The Moral Basis of a Backward Society by Edward Banfield). This is fed by a serious drought of culture. We are now a cultureless society. Our politicians believe that culture is another word for money and so automatically our god is now officially money.
Take the latest Eurostat survey: most EU citizens believe that the defence of freedom and democracy is a main priority even if it impacts prices and cost of living. Not in Malta. Here, our priority are the prices. We’d rather let Vladimir Putin do whatever he likes and kills how many people it pleases him, as long as we have more money in our hands.
Bang on cue, our finance minister, Clyde Caruana, substantiated this by pointing fingers equally at Russia and Ukraine: “When you have two giants banging their heads in conflict, it is the smaller countries that must pay for the consequences.”
Caruana forgot that only last month he was frantically applauding Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky when he addressed our parliament. Now, he’s parroting Putin’s words against sanctions on Russia. What about Putin killing democracies when only “we must make sure the Maltese people do not get to bear the brunt of decisions taken by larger European countries”?
Truly, we are a one-island-show of horrible, unprincipled, history in the making.