Imagine living in a country that had published a sustainable development strategy to the year 2050, following an extensive public consultation process that influenced its content.

Imagine if that policy not only spoke about issues such as poverty, environment, clean air, democracy, the rule of law and the quality of life, but actually offered a series of strategies to achieve them.

Imagine also that the government adopting that strategy had based it on international science, evidence and effective practice and had the people, vision and leadership to deliver it.

Such a country would be a place in which you (and more importantly your children and grandchildren) would likely wish to live. And you would, most likely want to contribute to realising that vision.

Such a country would likely be democratic, progressive and future-focused.

Sadly were you to search for such a place, you would certainly not find it in Malta, a land, and a people well down the path to abandoning all such pretensions.

Malta does indeed have a draft sustainable development strategy in the making but as per current norms, it is likely to be yet another document made up of words devoid of any content or intent. It will join all the other strategies and policies the government has no intention or capacity whatsoever of implementing.

They amount to nothing more than window dressing, shibboleths in the façade of Maltese ‘modernity’. Instead what we unforgivably have is a series of hollowed out words devoid of substance. As in so many aspects, Malta is fast becoming a place empty of substance, it has simply been squeezed and sucked out.

And most distressingly of all, it is a reality that everyone is aware of and apparently a majority are quoted as approving of it (I strongly doubt the validity of the surveys that claim this).

Watching or reading the speeches or press releases of the current Labour regime (including and especially those of the Prime Minister) has become an almost Trumpian experience, hyperbole follows hyperbole with erroneous claims a plenty. And, as with Trump, many Maltese have become immune to the cant, don’t hear it any longer or simply don’t care.

The avalanche of blatant lies and the torrent of horse manure that is spread in the wake of ministers, their lackeys and apologists is quite ferocious. The public’s money is used in vast quantities to turn disasters into triumphs with nothing more than empty words. Maltese public discussion and ‘debate’ has lost all meaning. As in Trump’s world, it is designed to serve the short-term interests of the regime and its controllers.

Rule of law, democracy, transparency, sustainability, etc., words that become debased and empty when spoken by any representative of the current regime. The deeply cynical use of such concepts and values by this regime at either the UN or on important public issues reinforces for many the belief that the values and principles themselves are worthless. Witness the so-called debate on abortion.

Stuffing our vital state institutions and structures in law, planning, media and education with incompetent/corrupt acolytes undermines those institutions and Malta itself. It also undermines the very idea of law, planning, communications and learning in the minds of many. For example, the machinations surrounding the American University of Malta, MCAST and other educational bodies undermines the substance and practice of education itself in Malta.

The debate around Comino in terms of tourism and development also illustrates the sheer emptiness of both thinking and strategising, especially if the empty pronouncement and posturing of the minister responsible is anything to go by.

It amounts to nothing less than meaningless twaddle and is intended to be interpreted that way by those ‘in the know’. We all know that this conversation is urgent and needed but we all simultaneously know it’s not real in any meaningful way. This demeans the issues, us as citizens and Malta as a living entity.

There is nothing inexorable about this, there are many, many examples of doing things differently and there is, of course another Malta albeit currently in hibernation.