Resignations and a breath of fresh air is what should have followed the publication of the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry.
As we witness what is happening in Afghanistan, we keep asking ourselves why the majority of people in the various tribes of Afghanistan fight all attempts to bring the country into the modern democratic sphere of nations.
Apparently, the scenes we get on TV of a barren, mountainous country with constant internal strife among the various tribes and one common feeling of the need to fight all foreign interference leaves one bewildered.
Yet, we have reached the stage where all attempts to modernise have failed and the West has decided to let go and to leave the country to its own fate. Poor women and children there.
I sense a somewhat similar feeling of desperation about our own small country which, in some ways, shows similarity with Afghanistan. How come, you might ask?
Shame on you Mr President
Well, first of all we are a tribal nation. We were until quite recently stuck in blind faith to the Catholic Church and have now replaced that blind faith for a new blind faith in either one of the two political tribal parties that have alternatively ruled us since Independence.
We are turning our once relatively green country with gardens, fields, wells and water to a barren concrete desert of chicken coops in tall concrete buildings.
We look to the foreigners not to learn from them or to emulate them in the fineries of democracies. Nay, all we want from them is their money whether it comes from illegal activities or through proper investments or aid such as the EU funds. We want them to keep their hands off our country and to stop interfering.
In many ways, we are as retrograde as the Afghans seem to be.
We do not fight a civil war, nor do we have armed guerrillas but we are as violent as they come anywhere in the world where the rule of law is broken down.
We have had more than a dozen car bomb murders in the last 10 years without any of them being solved and we have had six police commissioners in as many years, each one subservient or afraid to act, leaving the white collar criminals and their political friends and partners to take over the country and to instil fear in all those who try to bring enlightenment and democracy to our shores.
The fact that our president, for whom I used to have respect in the past, deems to be able to get away from his responsibility as a former member in the cabinet that, time and again, voted confidence in the inner cabinet that set up the parameters of our society that led to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, by claiming that his conscience is clear, is a sign that we are as fanatically religious and as undemocratic as the Afghans.
Shame on you Mr President. Your resignation would have strengthened the respect I once had for you and would have led the way for the others in Joseph Muscat’s shameful cabinet, others for whom I also have had respect like Evarist Bartolo, Chris Fearne and a few other senior members to also follow suit and to drop Robert Abela’s government, leading to a new election and, maybe, a new wind to sweep through the country.
The outside world will not relinquish Malta to its fate like it did with Afghanistan
A cleansing wind that, even though under a Labour government, would begin a chapter in our modern history that may, one day, provide the catharsis that we need.
I am always an optimist and a bit of a Don Quixote in my dream world and I do not believe that our tribalism is as bad as that in Afghanistan.
Abela sits on the fence, since he also was indirectly part of Muscat’s cabinet in an informal role of legal adviser. Yet, he has that bit of distance to the internal cabinet workings and meetings on the fourth floor before the 2013 election with the rich Maltese business families of Fenech, Apap Bologna and Gasans but also of many others in the construction – destruction – and so-called building industry. Because of that distance which, though wafer-thin, can still afford him some grace, he can be the one to bring Malta out of its present mess.
But he is failing to take the chance. He pleads for continuity. Continuity of what? Continuity of criminal activity, of gangsters, of entrepreneurial mafias, of threats to bloggers and journalists? Are we to return to burning Allied Newspapers like the Mintoffians did before?
I give my full and wholehearted support to Manuel Delia and Herman Grech and others subjected to overt and covert threats.
Stand fast because you are right.
I feel that, with over three weeks since the publication of the results of the Daphne public inquiry led by the three retired and sitting judges, we all expect more than just a false apology by prime minister and a reference to God and conscience by a president. We expect resignations and a breath of fresh air as well as punishments meted out to the guilty.
Abela, take this chance, we demand of you.
Do not try to ride roughshod over the 44 per cent plus who are leaning towards the Nationalist Party by holding an election which you may potentially win and think that this exonerates you. It will not.
The outside world will not relinquish Malta to its fate like it did with Afghanistan. Malta belongs to Europe; it is too advanced a country with a deep integrated history with Europe for it to be left to sink.
We also depend on foreign money through tourism, investments and EU funding to develop our country. Yet, the outside world wants to see us rejoin the system and not act as pariahs.