This was the week, or the weeks, that was or were. So many things happened, so many tremors were felt, that it rendered most comment superfluous or ridiculous. And every time anyone of us mere mortals spoke, we were upstaged by a bigger bombshell that hit us and left us agape.
To think this all started with a silly car mirror. I’ve had so many mirrors stolen, bashed or broken that if I had shot the perpetrators the cemetery would have been overflowing by now.
No doubt there was more to the whole sorry affair and we will never know what really got the driver’s goat and what actually happened that fateful night.
And good Lord was it fateful, with people who were eventually sacked just being rapped a tiny bit. Even the minister—for that read ex-minister—while being sacked has already been told he will get another plum job. The armoury surely needs a good watchman especially now—or God in heaven knows when—that the President’s Palace will be vacated by Parliament moving to the new Piano building.
The new minister could ask some of his predecessor’s trusted drivers to be the gate-keepers of that august collection of firearms. With a nickname like ‘il-machine gun’ the post sounds made in heaven for him. Obviously, if the Palace has any side-mirrors, let no one dare approach them.
This sorry tale has many interesting twists and layers, the worst being the battering some of our major institutions were left to suffer for way too long.
Even if we regain all our faith in the police force and people in power, how can the new commissioner feel safe and sound with one of his deputies having been not just implicated but a major hand in a colossal—even if botched—cover-up? My mind is way beyond boggling as this tale of ours has been swallowed by a black hole and subverted any known boundaries of what is, and can be, understood by silly humans.
The best thing that has happened however, in the long term, is that the smug grin on our Prime Minister’s face has, or should have, been wiped off, hopefully forever. Now it is a grim look—and his cockiness has been pulled down to a lesser, more human, level.
He is still perched on high—knowing he commands a comfortable majority in Parliament and that in his last electoral battle he won handsomely. He knows—or certainly thought until a few weeks ago—that it would take a herculean task to move, or to lose, that following and majority. But the battles he has had to confront have definitely clipped his silly wings.
The PN has not just won a semblance of strength but has also managed to regain the trust of its foot-soldiers, many of whom were either bored, angry or switching.
All this is healthy—no country can have a party that is way too sure of its strength and does everything it fancies or have a leader who lets his lieutenants and privates act as they please.
It is good that the party in power is worried—not necessarily by a resurgent opposition, but that the electorate will back it only if it honours the clear mandate it was given to clear up the mess there supposedly was before it took over.
The electorate is a fickle lover—at first it doesn’t question your motives and ways and doesn’t look deep inside your soul. But it will dump you merrily once you show that your soul is dark and scary.