What we still need to solve as a society is how to really adopt and truly respect the principle of accountability: how should all those having a public or private charge – one that impacts on the life and conduct of citizens – assume responsibility for what they do? In this field too, the friends of friends culture remains strongly embedded: If I expect that X should give a transparent account of his/her actions, he/she will expect me to do the same. Now, isn’t it the case that one and all, we would like to earn good money in peace while living well...? So, let sleeping dogs lie...!
Such sentiments undermine the drive to really establish a culture of accountability – one in which regularly and as a natural way of doing things, the expectation is that valid accounts are presented covering activities being carried out.
Perhaps this is why so many prefer a management style that operates on a one-to-one basis, rather than “collegially”, in a wider group mode. Information about ongoing proceedings does not reach everybody in the same way and at the same time. Instead, it is deconstructed into different shapes and channelled to different groups of two to three members. Which creates space for multiple ambiguities.
The emergence of such space inhibits accountability.
***
Passports
As an issue, the sale of passports has once again come up for discussion and controversy. It will stay that way.
A curious point to note is that contestation started when the policy of selling citizenship got to be adopted by small countries like Malta or Cyprus. Big countries like the US and the UK, have for long years indulged in practices quite similar to it. In their case though, their very size allows them to cover or fudge its effects, both good and bad. For small countries, this is not possible. Whether they experience a surge or a fall in their affairs, very soon the changes become public.
I am one of those who are hardly in favour of schemes to market passports, but I recognize the hypocrisy of many of their critics. They woke up to fret about them when the smaller countries began to put them in place.
***
House in Gozo
I was impressed by Mark Doneo’s new Maltese language film “Hemm dar il-Qala” (“There’s a house in Qala...”) that I’ve just seen. It is directed effectively and fluidly, and for most of the time also has nicely crafted dialogue and competent acting. As the title indicates, the film takes us to an abandoned house in Qala. Nobody seems to want to live in it any more.
The head of a PR agency accepts to send a team of film technicians to shoot a documentary about the house. They all end up overcome by the bad vibes that prevail inside it. Or else, have they been trapped in the machination of some madman? What is certain is that in the past, a horrible story seems to have occurred there.
Interestingly, the influence of Dario Argento makes itself well felt. However, the plot could have been tightened to prevent a few scenes from sounding repetitive or incoherent.