This past week, we woke up to the news that Ukrainians are facing bloodshed inflicted on them because of the psychopathic whims of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The whole world is aghast at something illegal, unjustified and irresponsible as a barking mad invasion of a neighbour country. With a few exceptions. Donald Trump, still trying to rise like a phoenix, has hailed Putin as “a genius”. And, in Malta, our government has been cautious and sparse with expressing shock and stuck to uttering little tsk-tsks of “Malta supports the EU view on Ukraine”.

When Prime Minister Robert Abela was asked if Malta will continue to allow Russian nationals to buy golden passports – a legacy of the disgraced Joseph Muscat, tailor-made to provide an EU passport to Russian oligarchs – Abela suddenly noticed something much more interesting in the far distance and failed to answer the question. Which, of course, means: yes. Therefore, while the rest of the world is imposing sanctions on Russia, we will keep on accommodating rich Russians and allow them, with their Maltese citizenship, a way around.

Russian Ambassador to Malta, please take note: your president is a bully who wants to compensate for his Short Man Syndrome and his never-ending reign has been nothing but a one autocratic, anti-democracy ploy until he gets what he wants: destruction of the west.

Russia is today a country where dissent is carefully managed through oppressive legal pressure, insane public propaganda, targeted violence and a total control of the institutions. That frees up Putin’s people to revel in orgies of greed. His Kremlin ‘government’ operates without checks and balances; ethics and transparency have long gone out of the window, investigative journalists have been killed and any form of opposition is routinely silenced.

It is a country where organised crime and money laundering thrive and where disinformation campaigns are the order of the day. Alexei Navalny, Putin’s unrelenting critic, who survived an attempted poison attack but is now jailed, has had one consistent message: the president and his men are “crooks and thieves” who are “sucking the blood out of Russia”.

As I am writing this, I am saying to myself, hang on, all this sounds familiar. All we need to do is replace ‘Kremlin’ with ‘Castille’. Both are government seats which aim to snuff out the power of democracy.

Castille is clearly very sympathetic to the Kremlin. That could be because of the “high net-worth” people who we hand passports to, or it could be for other reasons known only to the disgraced Muscat and his replacement. What is clear is that the Labour Party follows the same Russian model. As Alfred Sant would put it, we are a Russia in the Mediterranean.

As Alfred Sant would put it, we are a Russia in the Mediterranean- Kristina Chetcuti

Like the Kremlin, our government claims it wants unity when it is constantly applying the divide and conquer strategy; it claims it wants an open society but, deep down, it is always stoking the fire of xenophobia and dehumanisation; it claims it’s a gvern li jisma’ but allows a culture of impunity which resulted in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. This election month, all the government’s fake claims will be turned into showbiz events and plastered on rainbow-coloured streamers.

Five years ago, the Labour party brainwashed everyone into thinking that it is the ‘positive’ party and anyone opposing it was ‘negative’. This time round, the concept is different: it’s the party of the ‘future’ and anyone opposing it is ‘stuck in the past’. It has never been more evident that they are keen to erase the past and they want us to forget it. The only problem is that Muscat keeps popping up like some Banquo ghost, no matter how many times Abela squirms and hisses “quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee!”.

The Labour Party thinks, as it did in 2017, that an election win can absolve it of all the shit that it has inflicted upon us in these last five years. Nothing, though, absolves bloodshed… except justice. The Labour Party fails to understand one thing: its duty is not to win in an ‘us’ and ‘them’ contest. This is not a football match or a Eurovision contest. The duty of the Labour Party as a political party is to plan for a country for our children’s children.

They think that every voter is a walking price tag. And maybe these nine years of Labour have turned us into that. 

Five years ago, we knew already that this lot was corrupt but that knowledge was drowned out by orchestrated mimicked cries of “there is no proof” or “show me the evidence”. Now, we have all the evidence in hand, and more.

A landslide win for Labour will mean that they will be invincible in the face of the crimes that they have committed and keep on committing.

It is for this reason that we must use the only democratic tool we have left available for the sake of our common good. Every vote counts to stop all the blood being sucked out of this island of ours.

Correction March 1:  A previous version included an erroneous reference to a direct order concerning the Franciscan Conventual Friars. The error is regretted.