Principled or arrogance?

Two lawyers believe they know better than a former European Court of Human Rights judge, two former chief justices, the dean of the university’s law faculty, the Chamber of Advocates and others who try to use their brains.

Is this a principled attitude or just plain arrogance?

Carmel Sciberras – Naxxar

Malta and beyond

In the US, in Europe and elsewhere there is a political and economic school of thought that favours reducing the state’s footprint to a minimum.

The state should, ideally, only be active where the common good requires it and private entities do not provide the services or goods.

Limiting the state to bare bones, tempered with the requirements of a social conscience, frees citizens from excessive taxation and limits freeloaders.

Those milking taxpayers to discourage this form of governing label it ‘far-right’.

US President Donald Trump. Photo: AFP

The concept of a free national health service in theory looks ideal but, in Malta and in other countries such as the UK, waiting lists get longer and, to remedy this, euthanasia is being pandered as a solution.

The thesis of a minimalist state also holds vis-a-vis other states on the international scene. Countless times, the US spent trillions of dollars in the defence of basic freedoms; and not just in supporting democratic Israel and Ukraine, and, for decades, democracy in Afghanistan and South Korea.

However, some conveniently forget that, even when the Catholic Knights of St John held sway over Malta and kept ignoring St Paul’s advice to grant slaves freedom, US navy sailing vessels visited the Mediterranean and bombarded Algiers to press for the release of Christian slaves.

Why should the US keep increasing its indebtedness to right overseas wrongs? I don’t blame the current US administration in changing tack, aimed at putting a stop to continued blood-letting but bringing warring parties to a stable solution, as it successfully did between Israel and Egypt decades ago, and it attempted to do in Donald Trump’s first mandate between Israel and moderate Arab countries.

As a skilled negotiator, Trump, at times, resorts to bluster, but the results obtained during his first presidency speak for themselves.

Russia did not invade Ukraine at that time, and when Syria’s Bashar al-Assad used banned chemical weapons against his own people ‒ a red line ‒ the US, with the UK and France, used cruise missiles against the Syrian dictator despite his hosting a Russian base at Taurus.

Coming round to the local scene, and the ADPD tenet of reducing resource use, they want to force people to give up private time-saving modes of transport in favour of, at times, obsolete 19th century-like muscle-powered contraptions with sparse safety features.

Yet, did the same ADPD, which has one of its few elected local councillors in St Paul’s Bay, conduct any aggressive campaign against the wasteful demolishing of the existing street furniture and paving at Buġibba Square, replacing them at an estimated cost of €10 million to the taxpayer?

So much for Ralph Cassar’s lip service to reducing resource use (‘Adults in the room’, February 14 and opposition from ADPD’s Sandra Gauci at local council level.

How about a video on social media from her sitting room, as she became very expert in doing before the last general election?

Or has my reducted social media feed ‒ which might get ‘edited’ by I don’t know who ‒ filtered out such semi-entertaining podcasts?

Joseph Bonett – Floriana