Where does one begin when tons of the proverbial brown material is hitting the fan? My take is that many of this country’s problems result from the wrong kind of attitudes that stifle a healthy democratic environment.

These attitudes are antagonistic to criticism, result in bad leadership and give rise to an unhealthy relationship between politics and business.

Critics are seen as the enemy to be vanquished. I lived the 1980s. Those who protested against corruption, the use of torture by police, and the right of parents to send their children to Church school were described as xewwiexa. Talking to the foreign media or addressing foreign institutions was seen as treason. Fortunately, over the years, most realised that the 1980s were a national disgrace. It did untold damage to the Labour Party, which in recent years, came to its senses and condemned what had happened.

But history has a habit of repeating itself under a deceptively different guise.

In the last seven years, an army of trolls was given free rein to attack and daub as traitors all those who condemned corruption, those who spoke to the foreign press or participated in international fora or in the EU institutions.

But now it has become evident that corruption is rife.  It has become manifest that what Daphne Caruana Galizia unearthed was not only true but just the tip of the iceberg.

Week after week, the revelations in court create a tsunami of sleaze and corruption which drowns us.

The monies mentioned in the corrupt deals of the 1980s are peanuts compared to corruption today.

It was not lack of intelligence but a wrong attitude towards leadership, which made them trade their spines for the benefit of their survival- Fr Joe Borg

We now speak of the globalisation of corruption: Panama, British Virgin Islands, Montenegro, Azerbaijan. In the 1980s the police colluded with muscled bullies. Now the police collude with the big-monied bullies. In the 1980s a young man was killed by criminals on a rampage.

Two years ago, the assassination of a journalist was carefully planned by a cabal of business and politics.

Had there been the right kind of attitude to criticism the country would have been saved this death by one thousand cuts that it is going through as a result of the constant dripping of information that we are getting from the court and the inquests.

The attitude towards leadership is wrong.

The 70 or so members of the parliamentary group and of the executive of the Labour Party who now voted Konrad Mizzi out had publicly defended him and Keith Schembri over and over again. They repeatedly lambasted anyone who dared criticise them.

They gave them votes of confidence in parliament. Unless they were totally stupid or naive, they must have known that Mizzi and Schembri were corrupt.

It was not lack of intelligence but a wrong attitude towards leadership, which made them trade their spines for the benefit of their survival strategy.

When Muscat told them that he wanted Mizzi and Schembri to stay they just cowered and said: Yes Sir, Yes Sir. When Prime Minister Robert Abela told them he wanted Mizzi out they just whimpered, went in a diametrically opposite direction and triumphantly shouted: Yes Sir, Yes Sir.

Had they had the courage of their convictions they would have forced Muscat to fire the Panama gang. They would have spared the country the anguish it is going through. Saying that they are ‘sorry’ is most definitively not enough.

The perverse relationship of businessmen and politicians is a massive problem. It is clear that behind corrupt politicians there are corrupt business people.

Is there any person in Malta who believes that the Electrogas project is not marred in corruption as a result of the alliance between corrupt politicians and corrupt businessmen? I purposely use the plural. I don’t believe that only Fenech’s dirty fingers were in the pie.

The Gasan Group, Tumas Group and CP Holdings, the Maltese shareholders of Electrogas, describe themselves as “clear leaders in their respective sectors”. Are we to believe that these hardened businessmen were so naïve that they smelled no corruption?

And let us for a moment believe that they were naïve because they are lily white, don’t they think that it is immoral to keep on getting rich from the proceeds of a deal universally labelled as corrupt?

17 Black was set up to feed the corrupt individuals benefitting from the Electrogas deal. There is also the secret company Macbridge.

Who are the dirty scoundrels being fed by it?  The privatisation of our hospitals? Who are the corrupt businessmen and the corrupt politicians behind this deal?

And given that all projects touched by Mizzi are compromised to the core would it not be a good idea if the db Group, instead of trying to persuade people that they have listened  (a slogan so frequently abused by politicians that it now stinks), try to persuade people that their (Pembroke) project is the exception?

 It is clear that many politicians and businessmen in Malta are either extremely naïve or corrupt to the core or choose their survival over fighting corruption.

It will remain so unless honest citizens do their utmost to defeat the system engineered by corrupt politicians and big business.

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