Poverty is different from 50 years ago, given that people now know that they are, in fact, poor. They do not measure poverty according to their own standards but by the degree to which they are denied proper care and dignity.
Health and social services are struggling to keep up with demand. Is this some form of national tribulation, that despite an ever-increasing need, there seems to be no improvement in the state of the nation’s health? By health, I am not referring only to physical health but also spiritual health.
An example of this was made abundantly clear when the previous prime minister proudly admitted that his advisor was a businessman, emphasising that his predecessor engaged a social worker.
What was there to be proud of? How does this approach reflect initiatives such as in vitro fertilisation and the introduction of free childcare centres? Was the aim to increase human dignity or profiting by agencies and private clinics?
If we don’t enact the moral arithmetic to counterbalance systems that are not working or working against the health and dignity of the nation, we can expect a proportionate reaction. This includes the abuse of tendering for excessively costly services, ignorance of concerns and feedback from professionals, and the promotion of unhealthy behaviours.
Furthermore, one cannot ignore the blatant spirit of bigotry in modern politics when parties try to dehumanise the opposition and shove their views down the electorate’s throats at all costs.
To solve this problem, politicians need to find a new genuine love for what they do.
Health and social authorities, ministers and governments are wrong to think that they are demonstrating power to satisfy their constituents by administering new laws and hammering critics. Real power is shown by a person’s restraint, by absorbing society’s frustration and malevolence in a selfless, neighbourly manner.
It is an unethical and perverse administration of the authority that one is bestowed when one tries to belittle the electorate. If anything, it shows poor moral fibre.
The crux is not that laws or policies are broken, but that they are broken in a way that hurts those who should be protected.
How can one explain that with the massive build-up of millions of euros being spent, there is no improvement in quality of life?
Politicians need to find a new genuine love for what they do- Ian Baldacchino
Indeed, trickle-down economies seem to benefit the rich more, with less taxation. For the poor man in the street, nothing has changed except that they are living in a country with more migrants, more jobs, and, in some areas, the embellishment of national monuments, such as Vittoriosa. Life has indeed become a nicer cage to live in.
Corradino’s prison facility, built for 470 people, holds around 700, 70 per cent of whom fall into recidivism. One hundred euros are spent daily per prisoner, and they are sent back out with the clothes they were initially admitted in. It is a meat grinder. Norway spends triple the amount to ensure that prisoners are self-sufficient, with jobs, and able to reintegrate into society. The lack of language translators for foreign migrants in prison will make this impossible.
The Agency for Community and Therapeutic Services, on behalf of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, reported a spike in the incidence of homeless referrals from an average of 63 to 83, although the numbers are likely higher.
This is not a phenomenon but a retribution of moral order influencing the civil order. The prophetic words of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen have become fact over and over, and it has finally become a reality in Malta as well:
“Dostoevsky wrote that in a future day, men would say there is no crime, there is no sin, there is no guilt, there is only hunger; then men will come crying and fawning at our feet saying to us ‘Give us bread’.” Nothing will matter except the economic.
“A spirit of licence makes a man refuse to commit himself to any standards. The right time is the way he sets his watch. The yardstick has the number of inches that he wills it to have. Liberty becomes licence and unbounded licence leads to unbounded tyranny.
“When society reaches this stage, and there is no standard of right and wrong outside of the individual himself, then the individual is defenceless against the onslaughts of cruder and more violent men who proclaim their own subjective sense of values. Once my idea of morality is just as good as your idea of morality, then the morality that is going to prevail is the morality that is stronger.”
Ian Baldacchino is a specialist in family medicine.