Years ago, my former Cabinet colleague Lino Spiteri wrote an article where he said that the time had probably come for him to take a look at himself in the mirror. We never spoke about that particular moment in his life because these are very private moments. Happily the moment passed and Lino has continued to give his written and spoken opinions, which are appreciated by all who enjoy reading meaningful, analytical articles.
John Dalli once told me that there is a time to enter politics and a time to get out and the one who can judge the timing to his advantage will always find success waiting. His own timing was messed up by circumstances, or maybe it wasn’t after all. Only he knows and he’s not talking. The time to bow out comes for all of us who live in the public eye, either because of what we do or because of what we choose to do. Again, these are private moments, not for public consumption.
In life one doesn’t leave the stage on a walking stick, eyes watering, wrapped in mufflers and barely able to walk. One takes one’s last walk on the boards with head and back upright, facing the audience, permitting the curtain man to open and close again and again. One doesn’t exit, unless with a steady step and, if one can, not before arms begin to ache and legs begin to sting from standing for so long applauding the stage.
It is incredible how touched one can be by events that occur thousands of miles away. Because instant communications today have made the world so small, we are immediately affected by what happens in some place we have never been to, of which we may have read at some time, distant to a degree from where we are.
The tsunami left a deep lasting impression on me. Those thousands of people going about their poor, wretched lives, ekeing out a living from the sea or from the soil to be swept away to their deaths in one breathtaking instant.
I can’t forget those thousands of children, whose future life promised them little more than it promised their parents – the sea, the soil and just an opportunity to endure for some years on this planet – murdered by a cruel sea, robbed of even that opportunity to spend a lifetime fighting for survival.
I am still affected by the pain of those who are left behind to grieve for parents who may have had nothing in this world but who were not less loved by their children than the sons and daughters of those who have everything. How can anyone forget that Indonesian father hugging and kissing the lifeless body of his six- or seven-year-old daughter while stroking the face of his dead son on the ground with his other hand? Such heart-rending scenes must make one stop in one’s tracks to revalue one’s perspectives and, indeed, one’s priorities.
I still hurt for the children of Beslan, poor and defenceless in the hands of cruel murderers without pity. That was supposed to be politics. I have lived with politics practically all my life, first in my father’s house and then in my own. The politics I knew was that of a divisive world greased on jealousy and hate, in which the players are supposed to dedicate themselves to making life better for others. I have been through my own pain caused by politics, pain that is now almost gone but not quite.
Those children in Beslan, massacred on their first day of school and the mystery that still surrounds those cruel days – the mystery of those children who disappeared into thin air. I can imagine their heartbroken parents who will not find closure perhaps until their dying days. How does one reconcile with such loss? And how can I ever forget that hulk of a Russian soldier standing six feet or more from the ground, weeping like a baby over the body of a lifeless three- or four-year-old child he had just removed from the school of death?
Tomorrow, an important national conference opens in Malta. It is about irregular immigrants – these people who came to us from Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Morocco, Sudan, Chad, Syria, Guinea and scores of other countries, which are either at war or where poverty is so stark that even subsistence levels have fallen.
To escape from their predicament they risked everything. Most of them left their loved ones behind – parents, wives and children, brothers and sisters, tearing themselves out of their family environment to risk their lives again crossing the seas. Their hope? That life somewhere else will be better and that they will one day be able to rejoin their families.
Not many of these irregulars thought they were landing in Malta. Most thought they had arrived in Sicily or in Italy. Instead they arrived here, in our Malta Cattolicissima that now keeps them incarcerated with love. Most of these people have lost all hope of ever leaving the detention camps in which we keep them. Some days ago they tried to demonstrate their despair to the rest of us on the outside. For their peaceful protest, these migrants were mercilessly beaten and one or two of them almost killed.
Who can forget that immigrant wrapped in his white bedsheet in which he had cut out a hole to put his head through, with the words drawn in pencil which read “I am not a criminal”, begging the question “so why do you keep me in this prison?”
There is an inquiry on but whatever the result, we as a nation have already lost. For years, in the minds of many Europeans who watched those horrific scenes of the irregulars being beaten by soldiers in full combat mode, Malta will continue to be associated with the ill treatment of blacks and with racism. We will have to work very hard to erase those unforgettable, despicable scenes. It will take time.
In the face of all this suffering both far away from us and around us, how important now are prizes and power and fame, good living and gold watches, diamonds and Armani and Givenchy, champagne and brandy, expensive perfume and birthdays, fun parties and holidays and more money and whatever?
Perhaps it is time to look at the mirror on the wall and decide what is essential now and in the years that are left. I look at the horizon and feel that the time to dust the mirror is near. I am sure it is.
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