I once read somewhere that a year on Mars is the equivalent of 687 days on earth, and, since everything seems to take incredibly lengthy periods to get resolved in this country, I’m starting to believe that, perhaps, many of our institutions are running on Martian time.

Let’s take this week alone, for example. A 37-year-old man who lived, studied and worked in Malta for 13 years was forced to leave the country. Despite the fact that Kusi Dismark was denied asylum when he landed in Malta in 2011, he was allowed to work and pay taxes and contributions. He even opened a hair salon in Ħamrun and was planning on expanding until he was detained.

Now, while his detainment was legal, how does it take 13 years to get everything together to ask someone to leave? This man built an entire life here and was allowed to become a functioning, contributing part of Maltese society. Does no one feel that it’s unfair and unjust that all that was snatched away from him after more than a decade?

Does no one consider the mental ramifications of keeping hundreds of people in suspended animation because our systems and processes are simply too slow? It’s not just the lengthy time frames either; apathy runs through the concrete body of this country like cancer.

Kusi Dismark deserved better; Jean Paul Sofia deserved better; we all deserve more than this

Seeing Jean Paul Sofia’s mother, Isabelle Bonnici, this week pleading for something to actually be done in the aftermath of her son’s death was nothing short of heartbreaking. Lest we forget that it took months and thousands of angry people for the public inquiry into his death even to happen, and, now that the results of the investigation have finally been published, what recommendations can we hope to see implemented?

Should a mother have to stand outside parliament asking for justice to be carried out? Isn’t this meant to be a democratic country that values its citizens? Why should we have to chase politicians and make noise for the bare minimum to be effected? No wonder everyone is so fatigued and full of anger and anxiety.

Sometimes, I honestly wonder if the perpetual delays in everything that happens in this country are a tactic of the people who rule us to tire us out and make us duller and more malleable. Which person can sustain years and years of worry? Of grief? Of anger? Which person can keep an ongoing fire burning for decades without immolating themselves?

I perpetually see flickers of cases in the media that have dragged on for sometimes dozens of years without result, and my heart bleeds for their families. Sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers are reduced to box files of information that are sometimes even misplaced and forgotten. Witnesses inevitably unable to recall things that have happened many moons before.

How can any of us be confident in a system where justice arrives shoeless and limping after a long and weary walk up treacherous mountains? How many days on Mars will it take for any of us to see any progress? How many protests?

Dismark deserved better; Sofia deserved better; we all deserve more than this.