A country has various components to its identity. It has flags and an anthem; these are symbols. It has leaders; these are its faces. While a country has symbols and faces, a country is its people. Symbols and faces are necessary, often serving as a synecdoche, but they fall far short of being the country as a whole.
The same applies to any organisation, including political parties. They stand, or rather should stand, for a set of ideals that bring together a group of people under the same symbols and guided by the same leaders.
A recent trend in memes has been the depiction of such groupings as herds. While this can be humorous for some, such a derogatory description of political adversaries, even within the same party, is not correct. As a metaphor, I would much rather use the term ‘flock’, with its positive connotations, rather than ‘herd’.
A flock needs a shepherd, also known as a pastor – terms that Christianity associates with its bishops. In a secular/political context, the leaders of political parties and countries assume responsibility for the role of shepherds (watching over) and pastors (feeding) their respective flocks. The flocks place their trust in their leaders, but with this trust comes great power, and hence great responsibility.
Trust should be repaid and not betrayed. Leaders must never abuse of this trust by allowing themselves to become Milton’s ‘blind mouths’, who look out only for their own interests and gorge themselves at the expense of their unsuspecting and trusting flocks. Such a betrayal of trust is never the fault of the people who unwittingly placed their trust in the wrong persons.
The blame for this lies with the betrayer not the betrayed, and in the case of our country at this particular period in its history, should be placed squarely on the doorstep of Joseph Muscat’s Castille.
Far too often, our population has fallen prey to evil’s ploy of turning people against each other, creating divisive and irrelevant controversies in order to draw attention away from itself.
Joseph Muscat’s tactic has long been to tap into vestigial and irrational partisan divides
Muscat’s tactic has long been to tap into vestigial and irrational partisan divides that are rooted in the subconscious recollections of a turbulent colonial history and to fan them into emotional hysteria through newspeak and the tweaking of historical events to suit the purpose of the day.
We have seen him using doublespeak to metamorphose from an anti-EU journalist to a fervent European politician (with a fat salary to boot); from an extremist push-backer to a humanitarian; from a conservative declaration against same-sex adoption to a paladin of civil rights.
His hypocritical stances and political posturing of convenience have managed to pull the wool over the eyes of his loyal supporters and so many others for far too long.
Many among us gave him their trust and the benefit of the doubt till he could not hide his betrayal from all of us any longer.
We, the younger generation, have grown up with a much freer access to information than that of our forebears.
This has made it possible for most of us to shake free of the shackles of polarised partisan myopia and see things for ourselves.
The ever-increasing presence of young people at protests on issues that matter, such as justice, environment and corruption, reflect this growing disenchantment with accepting anything from anybody at face value.
Muscat, and others of his ilk, are now feeling the pinch of that. No more will glib pronouncements suffice to gloss over the systematic and institutionalised wrongdoing of his government.
Youth have a long future to look forward to. We are all at a different stage of our life journey, and, therefore, it is us who have been hit hardest and who will have to bear the brunt of the consequences of long term contracts that, while milking the country dry, are lining the pockets of the ‘blind mouths’ who led us to this junction.
However good and worthy a people may be, their country can only be as good as its leaders. That is why Malta is now looking so bad. We are being assessed by the measure that Muscat has established.
It is time for this measure to be reduced to the bottom of the rubbish bin of history where it belongs, never to be reused or recycled. That is where youth movements can contribute in the present, to learn from mistakes of the past, to safeguard our futures.
Joseph Grech is a lawyer and MZPN president.