It has been well said that in Malta there is never a dull moment, yet every moment is dull. Our political firmament is perpetually illuminated by pyrotechnics. Enterprising businessmen, too clever by half, try to outsmart their competitors, by hook or by crook. Hard working citizens are engaged in a battle for survival, often against heavy odds. The majority, somehow, manage to survive, but few break through to rise above their station.

Broadly speaking, the social milieu is very often static. Entrenched interests prop up the status quo and are suspicious, if not outright hostile, to change. The plums are not on offer to the brightest and the most meritorious, but to those with the right connections.

Stagnation

The end result is stagnation camouflaged by movement. Most of the time, the country is treading water, pretending to move forward, yet remaining at the same place.

The abandoned site of the former Royal Opera House is the best illustration of all this. It has been crying shame to successive administrations ever since World War Two, which exposes their lethargy and procrastination.

There have been several initiatives to restore to Valletta what was once its pride and joy.

International design competitions were held, political party manifestos published, and experts engaged. Some people profited handsomely from this rush of enthusiasm – but Valletta, and indeed Malta, is still bereft of its inheritance!

Inertia

This is not a routine story of inertia under the Mediterranean sun. It illustrates incompetence, compounded by a deplorable lack of managerial acumen. As a result, the administration goes adrift. It lacks resolve and develops a propensity to let sleeping dogs lie. Hence the dull quality of life, and the ennui.

We can see it all around us. How many years ago was it that the government announced, with so much fanfare, a project to develop Fort Chambray in Gozo? Why is the hulk of the Excelsior Hotel still looking like an abandoned bride, weeping under the desecrated Valletta bastions, since the Borg Olivier years? Why has the government never had the guts to implement its own proposals to restore to our capital city an entrance worthy of its dignity?

Paralysis

All of this is indicative of creeping paralysis, which tends to get worse as public opinion becomes inured to it. It explains why public reaction to this condition is muted between elections – it is because the system inhibits change. So long as the ruling administration can rule by clientelism and the barest minimum of transparency, it is the government that calls the tune. All it has to do is to pay lip service to democratic formalities, while it beats all its propaganda drums in order to lull public opinion.

Meanwhile, the government can flout the Constitution and take its own indefinite time to appoint the Broadcasting Authority. It can safely dilly-dally until it appoints the Ombudsman. It can dilly-dally for more than one year and still refrain from completing a restructuring exercise of the Public Broadcasting Service.

In the meantime, a few anointed favourites roll in the clover, while the sun shines.

The administration seems to be petrified and presents a picture of impotence as the health sector shows signs of slow disintegration, as the list of patients waiting for hospital operations runs into thousands, hospital services deteriorate, and the services available at polyclinics are curtailed.

It may be a godsend for any private hospital. But the bell tolls steadily and monotonously for the ordinary citizen.

Malaise

The malaise is also progressively manifesting itself as an administrative malignancy. For some years now, the government has been making late payments to importers who supply medicinals to government hospitals.

It has not made, and it is still not making, prompt payments for land expropriated for public purposes.

Inertia has been institutionalised.

Public opinion no longer reacts – in fact, it takes things in its stride – when charges of corruption in high quarters take years to be sorted out, one way or another, in the courts and elsewhere, with not the slightest indication of further movement. In due course, the laws of prescription will erase lingering memories. That’s how the game has been played in the past.

If Malta is to survive in a globalised, highly competitive world, it has to wake up and get moving.

It must be shaken out of its lethargy under the resolute guidance of purposeful leadership – one that does not shy away from smoking out corrupt interests and from injecting dynamism in the established order.

Malta needs a leadership thirsty for change and bold to take action.

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