Maltese people are generous, kind-hearted souls.

Or so we like to tell ourselves.

“Before, we used to think of the people in our street, not just ourselves,” Cedric Farrugia told us wistfully. “We’ve lost this.” 

Farrugia was among the people who stopped to answer Times of Malta questions during a vox pop held in Valletta last week. The vox pop focused on Malta after the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Had that horrific crime changed the country in any way? 

Farrugia did not pull any punches. In a four-minute span, he spoke about the self-serving mentality that has taken over the country, its blinkered obsession with financial gain and the lack of empathy that now appears to be a national character trait. 

“Before, the unions would take to the streets to protest the rising cost of living,” he recalled. “Nowadays, they don’t even speak out.” 

Watch Farrugia’s perspective in the video above.