 Deep down, many people believe that there are only two schools of thought, no matter their denial after denial of this belief. If you are shocked at the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia then you must be a PN supporter, or more accurately, a Busuttillian. If you are upset at the behaviour of people with the repeated clearing of the shrine in front of the Courts of Justice, then you must be a PN supporter, or more accurately, a Busuttillian. If you are shocked at the behaviour of this administration towards the memory and family of Daphne Caruana Galizia, then you must be a PN supporter or more accurately a Busuttillian. On and on it goes, this infantile binary labelling. I would so love to live in a country where your expression of sorrow and your insistence that justice be served when a journalist is assassinated was the norm. Long before Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated, I liked neither PN nor PL. I considered both to be to blame for the absolute dysfunction of my native country. When we moved to Malta in 2010 under a PN administration, there were breaches of EU and Maltese constitutional law with regard to my salary, our Arms bills payments, our annual car licence fee payments... There were gaping holes in administrative policy which meant tenants, post 1995, lived precarious lives in substandard, overpriced accommodation of insecure tenure. Everywhere I looked, everywhere I went, I had doors slammed in my face. The Office of the Ombudsman played house in the Ombudsman's Office but the reality is that the Ombudsman is ineffective and by no means a check and balance on our Executive. The National Audit Office was oblivious to the fact that Arms - the sole, state owned utility billing company - was overcharging tenants as a matter of course. It sent me away with great disdain at the effrontery of my request that it does its job. Currently my complaint re the 3 years' arrears owed to me is with the NCPE. Let me give the NCPE the benefit of the doubt and hope that they will resolve this clear injustice with no prevarication. People do not see this. They did not leave Malta at the age of 22 and live elsewhere for 21 years. So they do not see that the above behaviour of successive administrations is absolutely not normal. It is SO not normal. I would so like to have a choice of political parties, all of which do a minimum of good governance, to leave me with a choice of political ideology. I had that in the UK. I lived my daily life, with my family, without having to worry about the accuracy of the utility bill or the accuracy of my salary payment, or the fairness of the car tax I paid. I lived my daily life knowing that the Executive was kept in check by rigorous checks and balances. I lived my daily life knowing that the integrity of streetscapes would remain intact. I lived my daily life knowing that the environment was protected from the excesses of developer lobbies. I lived my daily life with consumer protection enshrined in every purchase. I had the luxury of voting for the political party of the ideology I preferred because all administrations of all the spectrum of ideology were kept in check. It is SO frustrating to see the way political parties conduct themselves in Malta. They have done this for a long time now. I, for one, cannot wait to see the day when this toxic PNPL duopoly is done with. Forever. Whilst these primadonnas fight over political reputation, they don't see that their reputations are shredded anyway. But I suppose their arrogance allows them to think that they have managed to get away with the deflection. And I suppose they are right in this regard. They bank on the blind political partisanship to keep them smug and complacent in their positions of office, after they cynically swear on oath that they will serve the public, without fear or favour. The damage has been done. Why are we allowing them to deflect away to their hearts' content? Why are so many people so blind to this brazen manipulation? The good of our country comes down to the people. Somehow the people need to see that it is up to us to set the tone, to raise the bar. Somehow we have to persuade people not to think the thoughts they clearly think. Somehow we need to persuade people to not hate the memory of an assassinated journalist, whatever they thought of her writing. Somehow we need to persuade people that when somebody criticises the government, it doesn't mean that they are PN under a PL administration or PL under a PN administration. Usually it means that the person criticising loves Malta like nothing else and is worried about the path Malta is going down. Somehow we have to achieve this. I want, one day, to be able to say what I think without having to prepare my words beforehand so as not to unconsciously upset that person or this person. It is difficult in 2018 Malta to have a sensible conversation without feeling like you are in a minefield, avoiding this or that particular mine.
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