It’s been quite a week on the world stage. There’s been movement against the South Korean president, Syria is finally out of the clutches of the Assad family after over 50 years of dictatorship, and a 26-year-old man named Luigi Mangione was arrested at an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s over the gunning down of a healthcare CEO in Manhattan on December 4.

Contrary to the reception that a heinous crime like murder usually receives, Mangione’s face (and buff body) have launched hundreds of memes, hailing him as a hero. However, scratch the surface of the praise that thousands have lavished him with and you will find a barely concealed rage at a dehumanising healthcare system that many have considered broken for decades.

While all this was happening, lawyer and former PN MP Jason Azzopardi was being arraigned in court for filming a video inside the law courts without permission, with the justice minister insisting there were no intimidation motives behind the decision to charge him. Apparently, the fact that Azzopardi has become something of a one-man institutional corruption WikiLeaks and a constant source of embarrassment for the party in power is an unimportant footnote.

Without going into the case’s merits, it would be super nice if the justice minister or anyone else really took every case as seriously as they’re apparently taking this one.

As far as I know, Lassana Cisse’s alleged murderers are still out on bail, as is the suspected murderer of Chantelle Chetcuti; the Steward Health Care scandal continues to be shrouded in secrecy, and not so much as a black cent has been recovered, and the Electrogas story is still taking on new twists and turns.

There are no normal proportions to anything

I could be sitting here all day making lists of things that deserve our outrage and Azzopardi’s stint as a cameraperson still wouldn’t make it in the top 1,000 things that deserved a media circus complete with marching band.

It’s always the same in this country. You’re poor and steal a can of tuna and get prison time but you allegedly help rob the country of millions and you’re left to run free and upload smug photos of yourself. There are no normal proportions to anything, no rhyme or reason for doing things. Bad things are only considered bad if I don’t like you; everything else is permissible.

It’s worrying when you get the impression that many of your country’s authorities seem to be motivated by pettiness and spite and seem to be incapable of tackling real problems, delighting instead in taking potshots at the very, very few who are willing to roll up their sleeves and clean up.

As with what is happening with the Mangione case and the massive wave of support he is getting, sooner or later, people will wise up and stop writing “Prosit Ministru” for the paltry crumbs that are idly kicked their way while their ministers live like minor royalty.

There will come a time when people getting away with murder will just no longer be palatable. It sometimes takes a lifetime but the bell does eventually toll for all of us.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the 16th president of the US, which rang as true then as it does now: “You can fool all of the people some of the time; you can fool some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”