Just for a brief moment, this morning I’m going to talk about that Oprah-Meghan-Harry interview aired last week. I don’t know about you but in our family we’ve been having quite some animated discussions about it.
We all find the British royal family fascinating in varying degrees. I think that they are a plus point for Britain’s NGOs and the country’s economy in general. But never in a million years would I want to be born with that kind of silver spoon in my mouth.
All senior members of the royal family are under constant public and media scrutiny because their roles are amply funded by the taxpayers. It’s a bit like being a politician, only it’s 10 times worse because politicians: a) do it out of their own free choice and are not born into it, and b) they can put a stop to it by not seeking re-election.
It is extremely taxing being in the public eye. I was there for all of a nanosecond a few years ago and what I learnt is that you have to smile till your jaws ache or else they’ll snap pictures or film footage of you looking like a gormless twit and they’ll keep using those on a loop.
Women, obviously always have it worse. If, as was the case with Meghan Markle, you add racism to sexism, then the cocktail is barely bearable. The only option to survive this is to ignore the media and long for the days when you can retreat.
When Meghan and Harry opted to retreat this time last year, I was sort of relieved for them. Which is why I found it completely baffling that now they wanted to be in the media spotlight again. Isn’t that what they were running away from?
But air their grievances they did – some serious and some utterly petty, such as them complaining that, since they had stopped fulfilling public duties, they were cut off from the royal family’s pay cheque and so they had to live “a basic life” in a multi-million house in Los Angeles.
I thought that was a bit rich (excuse the pun) seeing, as in the UK, the US and everywhere around the world, millions of people throughout this blasted year of COVID lost their jobs and can barely pay their rent or mortgage.
But it seems that tin-eared is the way to be these days.
And this brings me neatly to Malta, specifically our prime minister.
Robert Abela, too, had his self-pity moment on television a few days ago. When hard-pressed by journalists about the dire situation of COVID cases in Malta, he started flapping and sulking and saying that he “should not even be at work” because he was “under medication” and he was feeling “groggy”.
Er, right. Was that our cue to suck our teeth and say “miskin”? Because what I thought was: what on earth is he doing there, in a room full of people, talking without his mask on?
Why wasn’t Charmaine Gauci, the masked superintendent of public health, who tells us to stay home if we’re feeling any symptoms, telling him off? Why didn’t Chris Fearne, the health minister, turn to him and say: “Look, you too need to follow the protocol. Go home.”
It’s time for him to retire to his boat, spend his days speeding up to Sicily and make way for a true, selfless captain at the helm- Kristina Chetcuti
Moreover, it was a bit rich of the prime minister wanting empathy from us when he has not shown a single iota of compassion to all the suffering that’s been going on. Did he ever make any reference to those families who lost a loved one to COVID? Or to those who have relatives fighting for their lives in ITU? Or to the vulnerable and the elderly who have been locked in for a whole year now? Has he ever spoken about those parents who had to quit their jobs to juggle home schooling? Or to the children who lost so many precious months of learning last year because the government was not equipped to provide teachers and students with adequate online teaching tools?
No. He never acknowledged the true victims of this pandemic. Instead, first he kept telling us that “it’s heaven on earth” and that “it’s business as usual”, and, then, with the emotional intelligence of an amoeba, he amplified his own physical and psychological problems.
Abela justified his outburst a couple of days later. “I’m human, not a robot,” he said. Correction. He is first and foremost the prime minister – his role is an institution and his job is to represent us, not himself. Therefore, if he cannot take the heat, he should get out of the kitchen, pronto.
He wants us to believe that the pressure of dealing with COVID is having its toll on him. The truth is that his handling of the situation has gone haywire simply because he cannot focus on it: 90 per cent of his energy is taken up trying to not be strangled by the mafia tentacles that he’s embroiled in.
Abela stands by people in top positions revealed to have been embroiled in a web of corruption during Joseph Muscat’s time or Daphne’s assassination. He then takes it out on journalists, on the NGO Repubblika and on Opposition MPs and manipulates creative deviations to save his own skin. No wonder the grogginess.
And while Abela is doing all this, he fails to pay heed to the doctors’ warnings and Malta’s COVID cases are breaking all sorts of European records.
The prime minister is not a royal family, he was elected to the post – he is there to serve us. He is not fighting the mafia and he is not clearheaded enough to fight COVID – so it’s time for him to retire to his boat, spend his days speeding up to Sicily and make way for a true, selfless captain at the helm.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti