Summers in Malta are always tinged with nostalgia for me; I see memories like rectangle-shaped photos browning at the edges.

There’s one of me in Dwejra wearing blue plastic sandals and a sun hat. I’m wearing that same hat in Xlendi playing on the sand with some local children. Only this memory has a video attached to it too: one of the older boys took my hat and wouldn’t give it back and, in the way that children sometimes do, I told him that I would tell the police. His answer was childish but indicative of how his mind was already being moulded: “In England that might work, but no one cares here.” I called him a liar, but he just laughed and ran away with it. It’s a stupid, small thing but in times like this, that memory resurfaces.

This week has been a sad one. While the leader of the opposition continues to unravel and stick his hooves in the mud despite receiving a second vote of no confidence, I wonder for how long this charade can continue. As Moneyval shows its teeth and reminds us that the altar of money that so many people in this country worship at could soon be destroyed, as more and more people get implicated in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder in one way or another, as yet another contract takes days to be uncovered, talks of letting the institutions work become less and less relevant.

It’s a pigsty of the highest order and instead of employing people to clean up the mess, we keep adding more bodies to the feed. With every day that dawns, new names are added to Santa’s naughty list and instead of having an opposition which is in a position to oppose, we now have the looming threat of a split party. A party which had already been weakened by years of complacency and a wonderful knack for choosing the wrong people for the job.

It’s a pigsty of the highest order and instead of employing people to clean up the mess, we keep adding more bodies to the feed- Anna Marie Galea

Of course, it suits everyone on the opposite side of Parliament House to let this pantomime unfold and why wouldn’t it? Keith Schembri knew full well what match he lit when all he used his time in court to do was throw Delia under the bus.

While senior members of the Nationalist Party squabble like kindergarten children with their very own court jester, it distracts us, the people, from all the dirt being shoved under the carpet. No one enjoys a good drama like the Maltese and there’s plenty of that going on. What joy so many must be taking in the very public, humiliating dismantling of the Nationalist Party. We are a people who will choose to cut off our nose to spite our face each and every time. There’s a reason the term ħdura can’t be properly translated into any other language.

No one cares about the perils of having an ineffective democracy because all they care about is that their god of choice is on the throne. Most people here can’t even spell socialism, let alone realise that they have been getting crumbs off their masters’ plates while the country they claim to care about has been raped and pillaged over and over again. This land is in tatters and yet we cling to our petty issues like Jack Dawson should have clung to that door in Titanic.

It’s embarrassing, heart-breaking and vile that so few feel compelled to say or do anything, but I suppose in the end what it does come down to is the fact that that young boy from my memories was onto something. Truly, no one does care here.

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