There is a perverse wind blowing in the sails of this government's ship and instead of worrying about it, the captain actually rubs his hands with glee.
The document called Constitution of Malta might have shortcomings, but removing the Catholic Church from its constitutional position should certainly not be a priority. Whom is the Church bothering anyway? There can be no sane answer, as the perverse wind of ideology keeps blowing and blowing, driving the ship forward towards a weird Liberal Utopia.
In a sane world, the priorities should be elsewhere. To my mind, the built-up environment is one priority which needs urgent attention.
Two interesting articles in the present constitutional document have a role to play.
One of these articles reads thus: 'The State shall safeguard the landscape and the historical and artistic patrimony of the Nation' (article 9).
The other states, 'The State shall encourage private economic enterprise' (article 18).
The way Malta's economy has evolved seems to indicate that a balance between the two cannot be struck - private economic enterprise has to thrive by laying waste the landscape and the historical patrimony of the nation.
But this is nothing short of folly. When the entire country will end up as one 400-km2 mass of pure, unadulterated concrete, what are we going to do? Emigrate en masse to Pachino in Sicily or to the Barbary Coast?
Frankly, I must admit I do not have a solution to offer. As a matter of fact, I do not occupy any public office. Instead, the captain of this ship driven forward by the perverse wind of fringe liberalism - a liberalism that is economically laissez-faire and socially libertine - seems oblivious to the impending disaster and not ready to spend a moment deliberating the problem.
We must find a solution whereby private economic enterprise can be encouraged without having to sign the death sentence of the environment!
We simply cannot give up. We cannot accept as Revealed Truth the laissez-faire theology of the God of the Market. Are we going to remove the Clergy of the Christian God from the constitutional document to bring in the Clergy of the Fringe-Liberal God?
The problem is multi-faceted. It is not only a question of wanting to resist the laissez-faire politics of this government. It is also a question of calibrating the situation to attain Justice.
The over-urbanisation of the country reflects a deep, psychological need related to Justice.
Stopping people from "developing" their land or the property they inherited smacks of injustice. Perhaps not in the strict legal sense, but in the moral and psychological sense, it smacks of expropriation.
We are all born with an innate psychological need to be treated equally. Society then tames this need by indoctrinating us that some are more equal than others are. And since this is inculcated into our heads from a very tender age, we accept it as a true reflection of the world and live according to its dictates.
This explains, for instance, why the fight for women's rights has necessarily turned into a fight and not an exercise in good-mannered persuasion. The same applies to the emancipation of other groups of people, whose predicament is marked either by an imposed inferior status or by exploitation, or both. Ultimately, it is the violence necessary to overcome the equally violent social power structures that engender and legitimise exploitation.
But this taming is only partial. It is applied with regard to positions of power and industrial production. With regard to other aspects of social life and the economy, the taming is weak.
The system we live in has its origins in the French Revolution of 1789. This important event didn't just happen; the legal, economic and social changes which erupted in its wake had been long brewing. The idea of freedom of enterprise is one of them and the new order ushered in by the Revolution wanted to do away with two fundamental restrictions: restrictions on the enjoyment and capitalisation of land and other property, and restrictions on market equality between economic actors.
In other words, a revolutionary idea which has now become mainstream responded to humanity's innate need for equality: all men were born equal and had the sacrosanct right to trade and make money freely and without discrimination, while land could not be entailed or otherwise kept off the market.
It is this idea which makes it difficult to protect the environment. If all men are equal, why should some be allowed to develop their properties and others not? If all men are equal, shouldn't all properties be eligible for development?
This big problem needs to be solved for the two above-mentioned articles of the Constitution to work like a politico-legal hole and shaft in the engineering fit of the State.
Instead, we have a Prime Minister who thinks it might be a good idea to spend public money and waste public time to debate (and hold a referendum on) whether to remove Catholicism from the Constitution!
Public money and public time should be used to find ways to save the environment while allowing people to make money.
But since that's not fringe, it's not cool. Spending, how much? one million euros?, to ask voters whether they want to do away with Catholicism in the Constitution, on the other hand, is.