We may be a happy people, according to a survey published in various sections of the international press, but are we being allowed to see things as they really are? We are certainly not a stupid people, quite the opposite. But we are without a doubt, being short-changed by much of our media in terms of our right to know the truth, in all its varying colours, tints and hues.
The latest bout of mud slinging from the reds and the blues respectively about the conflicts of interest and worse allegations regarding two prominent notaries, Charles Mangion for the reds and Toni Abela for the blues show, perhaps more than anything else, how our media (and our political media particularly) picks on items of little importance in any ethical debate, while the big dilemmas, the key moral issues, are not addressed, either whitewashed or swept under the carpet.
Is this all deliberate or just another amazing Maltese coincidence that keeps us all, and particularly vested interests in this country, happy?
Charles Mangion, deputy leader of the MLP, is being lambasted for being the notary in a contract while criticising the government at the same time for signing this contract, as well as alleging that it was done to raise funds to cover other problems. Now it certainly wasn't the most prudent or cautious of moves perhaps, but actually, if you look at it closely, he would have had even more of a conflict of interest if he hadn't criticised the sale while acting as the purchasers’ notary and occupying the political position he did.
He must really be laughing as I'm sure he even cleared this with the purchasers (who after all know he occupies a key position in the MLP and will obviously be a minister again one day and hence a person all business people will need!) who are probably not bothered one bit. All they are interested in, quite rightly in a country where property prices and property returns determine the ruling classes sense of well being, is that they didn't pay too high a price for it, that the deal was good for them! Punto e basta!!
At the end of the day he certainly didn't gain financially from criticising the government while acting as the purchasers’ notary. He said, if I remember correctly, the price was too low, and that certainly was not in the purchasers’ interest, now was it? It’s so convoluted and actually so unimportant compared to the real power games and struggles, which are way beyond conflict of interest allegations that are going on, that I really wish so much media time and space didn't have to be wasted on it.
Similarly, Toni Abela s is being attacked for being associated with a less than prefect person, in a company that started being dissolved in the 1990s. Again. Really! Is that all the rotten and bad thing we can find? Who in Malta does not have a skeleton in his cupboard, one unsavoury relative, one deal with someone who is less than perfect?
The ruling classes of all colours are obviously deeply embroiled in all this, and every time I hear conflict of interest I think waste of time, whitewash instead of the mudslinging game we are watching, because it is quite obviously all for show, like the huffing and puffing you see in wrestling, just there to get the popolin excited and sidetracked, away from the ridiculousness of our lives and the people we pledge our allegiances to.
Why are we not discussing the far more worrying dependency of our political masters on businessmen funding them to be able to survive? That colours everything doesn't it? Or the ridiculous salaries or honoraria of ministers, MPs chairmen, heads of government departments and how they all must do other things to have a decent life, which can give rise to allegations of conflict of interest against them. Amazingly again, the serious conflicts never emerge, it’s the suckers with nobody to protect them who are seriously attacked by the media?
Can it possibly be that so many of us who are so bright in all areas can really be so naive and accept the rubbish that is being fed to us as news and investigative journalism? Is this why the State here perpetuates an education system where thinking honestly and independently is low priority, while repeating what you are told is high priority? What sort of preparation for adult life is that? Unless of course they want us to be if not stupid, at least accept what we find and replicate essays about it!
Do the powers that be want us, to not want to... even think?
And it’s the same with the Church. For all the immense good it does and for all the wonderful people who don the habits of nuns and priests and lead exemplary lives caring for our little children, for the downtrodden abroad, and just being living saints, there is still a problem. Even what the Church tells us we are meant to believe blindly. Now blind belief, beyond anything that perhaps Jesus said, or is reported to have said (after all we only know what the writers of those times and after wanted to record) is not conducive to good thinking, clearer thoughts and a more honest approach to life. By encouraging us all to be blind believers, be it in politics or Church teachings, are the institutions of this country doing us a disservice?
The trouble with all this is that we are totally losing sight of what ethics and morals are. We are so, or our brains are, so befuddled and confused that when something really is wrong we don't even see it. We just retreat into our respective shells of a certain colour, faith or clique and say no, no that can’t be wrong because that person is my friend, or because I do business with that person, or because my daughter is going to marry his son.
Admittedly our ethics and morals have particular challenges here, because we are so small and so intertwined. But we still need a set of guiding principles and ethics to reach not perfection, but to wrench ourselves away from the unethical behaviours cum institutionalised corruption that is a characteristic of our country. Trouble is, it is not in the ruling classes’ interest to make this change happen. They control how we think via our education system. They control our beliefs through our religious system. They control our earning power through our system of political patronage too. And there is therefore no class of independently educated young people who can protest against all this and make Malta and Gozo better.
If you don't join the rat race here, you drown