These days I feel like a walking emoji. Specifically, that yellow-face emoji with an open mouth and the top of its head exploding in the shape of a Hiroshima-mushroom cloud. That’s exactly how my brain feels every time I pick up the newspaper to be told in bold typeface that yet another top echelon man running our country is a crook.
The Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination court case keeps revealing, day after day, that people who hold constitutional roles and whose job is to safeguard our society are nothing but a mob of toxic swindlers. No wonder Daphne’s last sentence on her blog was “there are crooks everywhere, the situation is desperate”.
No wonder she lived her last few months of life in seclusion – she knew well that this kind of cabal, which includes prime ministers, police commissioners and their assistants, judges, ministers and their wives, one mega businessman and one evil chief of staff, would stop at nothing to cover their tracks.
The taunting cries of “Where’s the evidence?” which were spun about until last November have now become a faint echo memory. The evidence is here and it is beyond revolting: it seems everyone who’s anyone is a full-blown collaborator in ugly crimes committed to hide previous ones.
Malta’s government is a veritable House of Cards. Make no mistake, our Frances Underwood is no other than Joseph Muscat. In fact, the buck of Daphne’s assassination as the culmination to cover up flagrant corruption, lies with Muscat. He was the prime minister responsible for a chief of staff, who in turn manoeuvred and staged a gossamer of criminals.
It’s telling in itself that Keith Schembri no longer bothers to sue when he’s called a criminal. He can’t afford for more truth to come out. Sometimes, in fact, I wonder why he doesn’t run away to some white sandy beach in the Bahamas – he has enough silver stashed to spend the rest of his days on a deckchair sipping a cocktail. But he won’t.
He gets his kick from plotting and avenging and from believing that he can manipulate everyone to his own bidding.
Malta’s government is a veritable House of Cards. Make no mistake, our Frances Underwood is no other than Joseph Muscat- Kristina Chetcuti
In true psychopath fashion, his mind is, at this very moment, full of cobwebbed ploys of how to bring down each and every single person who’s obstructed his conquest of Malta. But in a sweet twist of fate, it’s not those fighting to oust him who are quaking in their boots, but those who were in cahoots with him.
Meanwhile, our ‘new’ Prime Minister Robert Abela thinks that just because he “made” Cardona resign as Labour Party deputy leader, then, it’s all fine and dandy and everyone’s got his back.
It’s not how it works. If Muscat facilitated the atmosphere for the assassination of a journalist, and Abela is still protecting Muscat – he has even engaged him as a consultant – that can only mean the prime minister is somehow in it too.
Now that the house of cards is crumbling and all the actors are fistfighting and backstabbing each other for their own survival, Abela has a choice. Will he push for the arrest and investigation of Muscat and Schembri? Or will he keep ignoring the way they brought the country to its knees, hoping, like that emoji of the monkey covering its eyes, that we will eventually dismiss it from our minds?
The thing is, there’s no forgetting anything. Civil society has risen from the ashes of Daphne’s assassination. We’ll be like that eagle pecking daily at Prometheus’s liver until whoever is in charge cleanses the deep roots of corrupt rot. This is the age where it’s not politicians who bring about a change in culture – but citizens. To quote The Economist: “When enough citizens march against an injustice, they can prevail. That is the power of protest!”
The George Floyd protests around the world have resulted in statues of notorious historical figures being torn down.
Watching the statue of slave merchant Edward Colston being thrown overboard head first in the Bristol sea made me itch.
I got the sudden urge to go and pull down the statue of Lorry Sant in the Paola public garden. Sant is a symbol of corruption, thuggery and downright cruelty, if ever there was one. He is a man who offered nothing to the common good of the community, not even to his own Labour Party – and his bronze image was certainly not put up by social consensus.
Upon reflection, though, I realised that toppling him would do no good really. What we must do instead, is affix a plaque under his feet, explaining his extortions, his violence and his amorality, for future generations to see and understand.
Like that, history won’t repeat itself.