It has been another week of unbridled clownery in this circus that we call home, including a man wanted by the Maltese police being found in jail already serving a sentence two hours after a call to the public was issued by the police themselves and someone making a fake listing with a photo taken from a hostel in Bangkok trying to market a dormitory in Pietà with 10 beds allegedly available for €250 per month per bed.

When it comes to the man already in jail, I don’t even know where to begin. As usual, I’m left wondering how this country is still managing to present a thin veneer of law and order to the rest of the world. How do you not know that someone is already in your custody? Is there really such a big disconnect between one department and another on an island so very small?

Then, again, I don’t know why I’m asking naïve questions like this when the jury of Albert Brian Rosso, who was shot dead in Marsaxlokk in 2005, started on Monday. Let’s hope that case goes better than Sion Grech’s case did in January – a case that, ironically, also took 18 years to reach its conclusion.

Indeed, if any of the real adverts I’ve seen floating around the internet are to be believed, it would seem that the only thing that seems to need more scrutiny than our justice system is our rental market or, rather, the awful conditions in which many of our fellow countrymen expect foreigners to live in. Every week, almost like clockwork, a new atrocity is posted online.

We have created a land fertile for modern slavery to thrive and I’m not sure why no one is saying anything about it- Anna Marie Galea

In the past few months alone, I’ve seen countless social media posts by people either paying atrocious amounts to live in equally atrocious conditions, being pushed out of their rented premises with little to no warning and no regard for their possessions, being scammed by owners with no chance of recompense and, finally, and more and more commonly, being crammed together like sardines in rentals that would barely comfortably fit a family of four.

It’s a shabby state of affairs and one that makes me feel great shame. Where is the mythical Maltese kindness and hospitality? What happened to treating others with dignity? And, since those seem to be in short supply, where are the authorities?

Extortion and exploitation are becoming more and more prevalent as our greed and cost of living increase and that’s where the law should come in. I can already hear the sirens of the ħallina nagħmlu lira brigade in the distance but,  as usual, they’re coming for the wrong carcass. We have created a land fertile for modern slavery to thrive and I’m not sure why no one is saying anything about it. It probably doesn’t make it to anyone’s agenda in any real way because there are no votes to be had in it.

These situations cannot be allowed to continue. How can we claim to be a free and democratic country when our justice system is in disarray and we allow people to live in conditions not even fit for cattle because they have no choice?

This is not the Maltese dream, it’s a Kafkaesque nightmare.