How I wish we didn’t have the toxic PLPN partisanship poisoning everything all the time. The murderous, brazen corruption of the ex Prime Minister, his ex Chief of Staff and others has nothing to do with PN or PL, really. These were men who looked at the situation in Malta with a cold, hard stare and understood what was ripe for the taking. They took advantage of a perfect storm of a stagnant, decaying parliamentary democracy and its weak institutions, and hammered the last nails in its coffin. They took advantage of the idolatry of PL supporters and milked it for all its worth.
Muscat is still milking it today as he negotiates his involvement in a possible Italian football project. Isn’t it interesting how Maltese football has been revealed to be 8th most corrupt in an international study? Has Muscat got some dirty money to launder by any chance? In a country with no toxic political bipartisanship, we would never have allowed the situation to continue beyond the Panama Papers revelations, let alone the assassination of a journalist. Look at us now – we’re in the situation where not only was a journalist assassinated on the watch of the previous administration but this administration is itself implicated in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. So this is strange territory to be in. After a 40 day campaign we have a new prime minister now. The two candidates for the PL leadership were both tainted goods. Both backed a tainted prime minister and did nothing about Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri when in 2016 the Panama Papers revealed that they owned companies in blacklisted jurisdictions. This is the context we are currently in. It is good that over the last few weeks, we have had the resignations of Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, Laurence Cutajar, Neville Gafa and the exodus from politics of Chris Cardona. But in a normal country all these people would long ago have resigned, been charged and prosecuted for various crimes and dereliction of duty. We are in strange territory because we should never have got to this point. This is why we find ourselves feeling grateful for the new prime minister allowing the flowers and candles at the Daphne Caruana Galizia memorial to remain there and not be cleared away by the state Cleansing Department. This is why we find ourselves being grateful re the various resignations. When really these people should have been sacked and made to face justice long ago. So how should we function in this point of space and time that should never have existed? This is the question. How do we bridge the chasm between what has happened and what should have happened years ago? I hanker for a functioning Malta where what should happen, happens. Where I don’t feel grateful for what should be the norm. I dream of a Malta where we have completely autonomous institutions which step in when they need to step in. Most of all I dream of a Malta without the poisonous bipartisanship being taken advantage of by unscrupulous politicians or worse, imprisoning all our politicians in a dead end race to the bottom, of pandering to the PNPL feudmongering tragedy that has characterised our politics since independence. Will Robert Abela be the PM that does what is absolutely necessary to break this impasse once and for all? Hope, they say, is the last to die.
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