As the country continues to come apart at the seams and we await the results of Moneyval and which minister or former minister will be implicated in a criminal activity next week, I can’t help but reflect on how very far we have fallen.
Everyone keeps harking on about the mental health of select individuals, but what about the mental health crisis created every single day for so many of us by the instability, the confusion, the corruption and the lack of space to escape to? When the lines between right and wrong are constantly blurred to suit the agendas of the few, when justice is neither welcomed nor given importance, chaos reigns.
When it was reported just a few days ago that Malta had plummeted 17 places in the World Happiness Index, I was far from surprised. Yes, the pandemic has undoubtedly taken its toll, but given the near-total absence of anxiety-inducing lockdowns I suspect that there is far more to it than that.
The number of scandals that have come out in this year alone is staggering, literally so staggering that in the past few months, one of my perpetual concerns about mentioning specific issues has been that they evolve in about six different directions by the time what I have written goes to print. Many people in this country are suffering from PTSD, living in constant survival mode, and trying to understand how the unthinkable is allowed to thrive.
Over last weekend, Keith Schembri and 10 others were denied bail but by the time the beginning of the week rolled around, the Degiorgio brothers were asking for pardons and offering to unmask yet another minister, while we were hearing allegations that newly reinstated minister Justyne Caruana was generously giving thousands of our tax money to a friend of hers. And it’s only Wednesday.
Many people in this country are suffering from PTSD, living in constant survival mode- Anna Marie Galea
Meanwhile, we have the ex-prime minister stirring the pot and saying that Nationalists want to get their revenge for Labour’s electoral wins, and Labourites taking his lead and accusing everyone and anyone who cries foul of being jealous. The infantility and smallness of it all is breathtaking. If pettiness were a national sport, we would take home the gold every single time.
Do people really think that it truly makes a difference to me personally who is in government? I’m still going to have to get up in the morning, still going to have to go to work and still going to be annoyed that most of what made this country beautiful is gone. What I continue to object to though is living in a country where I’m called negative just because I refuse to sit like a gormless, benign fool while millions of our euros are funnelled into shady deals with even shadier people with the government’s blessing.
I don’t need any biased television station to tell me what I’m able to see with my own eyes. I thought I was going mad over the weekend when I was trying to get information about the arrests while One TV and TVM merrily stuck to doling out recipes and broadcasting Mass. Is this the balanced media that they proclaim to offer? It’s funny how it’s always the people in glasshouses throwing stones.
If your mental health is already hanging by a thread, spending a few days on social media reading different versions of the news will almost definitely give you the last push you need to descend into despair. Indeed, perhaps you have to be mad to thrive in such an environment with a smile on your face. Mad or blind, wilfully blind.