When one tends to start despairing of human beings and society, up springs a young 35-year-old man who makes the ultimate sacrifice – trying to save somebody else from a fire that broke out in a neighbour’s home. In trying to enter the apartment and save the woman there, he unfortunately died of smoke inhalation. In ethics, this is called a supererogatory act, one that is far above what is required of one to do.
In ethics, an act is supererogatory if it is good but not morally required. It refers to an act that is more than necessary, when another course of action – involving less – would still be an acceptable action. That is humanity, capable of reaching the highest heights but also capable of plumbing the lowest depths. Therefore, I take my hat off to this brave young man and his family, a man whose example deserves exceptional mention and merit.
This attitude contrasts sharply with what one of our MEPs Alfred Sant said recently in the European Parliament that corruption is a Europe-wide problem and not just in Malta, a strange utterance indeed. Strange for two reasons, the first being that he is admitting to corruption existing in the Labour Party’s government. Secondly, he is implying that all Europe is corrupt and that since this is likely the norm, it is all right for corruption to be present and this excuses the government’s actions or rather the lack of action. Everyone knows that in political parties there is the occasional bad apple which contaminates and ruins some of the others. Most politicians are not corrupt, but the corruption that we have now is at the very top. It is an institutional type of corruption which is found in the top echelons of the government executive and the inability or shamelessness of the Prime Minister to act in the face of such irregular behaviour by his underlings. It is unbelievable when one considers the bad name his government is getting for the whole gamut of affairs, from the Panama Papers and graft through the sale of passports, to the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
This inertia by the Prime Minister makes one wonder about the depth of his involvement and that of his family in this whole affair, especially when there are serious allegations in that regard. I heard the Prime Minister argue that Konrad Mizzi paid for his indiscretion by being removed from his energy portfolio and becoming a Minister without portfolio. However, this hardly scratches the surface at all. In real life, Ministers who default should lose their place in Cabinet. Ministerial secretarial staff that default should be asked to step down, at least until their name is cleared. That is the praxis and right way to do things. The Prime Minister’s position of saying that they will resign if something is flagged during the magisterial enquiry is hogwash. There is too much collusion, from Police Commissioner’s level, to the new head of the FIAU, to the Attorney General’s office, to the main government services, for one not to believe that something is wrong. Some occurrences in life may be exceptional, but too many exceptional occurrences simply show that they are not chance occurrences but manipulated ones.
Almost a year has passed since the last general election, and the next four years will pass quickly too, especially so because the governing executive has become trapped in its own created inertia. The people closed one eye to the political goings on at the highest level of government in the last election, but they will not do it a second time. Experience shows that if after five years, the people choose to close one eye as long as the economy is working, then after 10 years, they often have both their eyes wide open! The sands of time are now in motion and the first cracks in the governing edifice are visible. In five years’ time, the cracks will be much bigger!
Dr Sant should not be smug that corruption is a Europe-wide problem and not just Malta’s. He is in the European Parliament to fight corruption at all levels and in all countries of the EU. However charity begins at home, and since it is his party in government, and as he has declared, he is not happy with Minister Konrad Mizzi’s declarations, maybe he should do something more about it than just excusing it at the peril of his credibility! Is there a Labour politician able to carry out a supererogatory act and save his government, party and country or is everybody busy feathering his bed with fistfuls of money! Virtue or the lack of it is the name of the real game!
Dr Asciak MD., M.Phil. is Senior Lecturer II in the Institute of Applied Science at MCAST