Disenchantment can be tough. It hits you after the briefest of epiphanies, lingers until you’re cynical and, sometimes, it leads to the unpleasant feeling that even slightly dented relationships with those around you are broken, not worth fixing.

The same could hold for the bond with your own motherland. It was no surprise, in fact, to read of surveys where the younger generations are actively eyeing their suitcases, looking not for a weekend getaway to a low-cost circle of hell but to change their status to ‘migrants’.

Of course, there’s the irony of hundreds of Maltese feeling ill-at-ease at home, also partly as a result of neoliberal Muscatonomics, a highlight of which included the mass importation of low-paid workers to work on infrastructural and construction projects.

It loudly translated into speculation and profits for the few; overcrowding, noise and clutter to the common citizen.

I write this piece at the same time as President George Vella is dishing out the annual Republic Day honours. But I guess our long weekend was different, as we dealt with yet another incursion by powerful structures who bullied another landowner in Luqa, in another instalment in a three-year campaign to cleanse Malta of its farmers.

Therefore, on Republic Day I struggle not to think of the weight of the injustices many citizens have to bear daily, as a result not only of arrogance and the power-addicted figures who wield it best but also of the drunken belief in putting economic growth over social justice.

This is not the usual ‘I Hate My Country’ column which yearns for greener, foreign grass. Neoliberal economics wield more or less the same destruction and disenchantment everywhere and the rise of the right across Europe is a clear indication of the tumour.

That said, we do live in a republic which has grossly misplaced its priorities. I grew up in a country built around its communities, the privileges of free education and healthcare and the social welfare system.

As a kid I remember hundreds of Maltese donating food and clothes to thousands of Albanians escaping a crumbling regime.

It wasn’t perfect; corruption has traditionally been covered up thanks to omertà and the weakest of men’s virtues, shame; a look at today’s leaders will tell you that substance is in short abundance.

We read of overpaid CEOs doing their utmost to cosy up to business, granting concessions for everything from planning to the take-up of public spaces; of arrogant politicians (sometimes literally) in bed with magnates, of positions of trust and the web of patronages where entire districts are in the employ of their patron minister.

Elsewhere, the government dishes out funds for young people to pursue a career in farming while speculation and decades of neglect by successive administrations are forcing farmers out of their land. At the same time, the government is sponsoring the destruction of the sector through the persistent take-up of fertile fields for road building.

In our towns and villages, communities are being uprooted by new developments destroying our heritage and culture- Wayne Flask

Nobody in the cabinet has spoken out against this massacre, even as it becomes evident that our transport policies have failed and new roads will drown in cars as select contractors are soaked in direct orders.

In our towns and villages, communities are being uprooted by new developments destroying our heritage and culture; watch our leaders, primarily Prime Minister Robert Abela, ignoring these communities’ objections to harrowing projects such as the Marsascala marina and the db towers in Pembroke.

Projects enabled by the additional theft of public land for free or dirt cheap: the maladministration of our scarcest resource is dictated by a particularly dark form of corruption, with the Lands Authority going as far as barring its own auditors from doing their work.

The overheating economy quickly melted away what was left of the authorities’ conscience. As the construction machine chugs on, hiring ex-politicians to grease the lobby’s wheels, deaths at building sites continue to rise, with very limited and frail steps taken to regulate the industry. Workers in various sectors – especially migrants – continue to be driven to the ground as nobody seeks to curb their ruthless exploitation.

We live in a society where a bully with military fantasies gets to run prison like a closed fortress, with his minister woefully unable to acknowledge the existence of an independent inquiry about all those deaths, let alone shoulder political responsibility.

But, instead of joining the NGOs’ call for open access to prison, our opposition and Curia have allied with dope-test-wielding employers to obstruct an important reform, one which will reduce citizens’ contact with the criminal underworld.

In a way, those who should keep the government in check have a weird way of being upright; take Archbishop Charles Scicluna’s behaviour in the Abbazia saga. Sadly, the conservative alliance against weed is nowhere to be seen in the bigger fight against greed.

In fact, the fervent conservatism our young republic carries, like a thorny cross, makes it difficult for a woman in Malta to be treated with dignity: consider domestic violence cases, the salary gap, institutionalised sexism, an insensitive judiciary and police  and the suppression of reproductive rights. Gender quotas are a just a hastily applied concealer on the battered face of women’s rights in Malta.

I don’t wish to rain on Vella’s parade: my ruminations on the state of the nation aren’t that far from his and I cannot blame his presidency for it. Like his predecessors, he can only watch as the closed and corrupt political framework strangles public life into a system of neoliberal patronage, where power is wielded by the unelected.

There are no medals for those who fight this thankless war: the continuation of the struggle is civil society’s biggest honour.