Time’s winged chariot waits for no man. Its passage is unstoppable. After all, life is motion and motion means change. However, the mill wheels of time turn for ever, lazy minds are not easily reconciled with the risks of change.
The interval between the decay of the old and the emergence of the new constitutes a period of transition which must, nearly always, be one of uncertainty, trial and error, and, at worst, turmoil.
The timid may look at the unknown future as a threat. The more mature will be prepared to take calculated risks.
It is the young stalwarts who usually brave the unknown.
The ones who succeed are not those who take an aimless leap in the dark. The real pioneers of progress are those who realise that change is the motivator of progress. Innovators in this category have, in fact, displayed even more wisdom than courage.
This school of thought has traditions that go back as far as Heraclitus (c.55 BC) who held that nothing is permanent but change and that one cannot step twice in the same river because other waters are continually flowing in.
This long-winded reflection has relevance at a time like this when Malta is facing many challenges as it reaches another electoral cross-road.
Where have we stumbled and how can we put our best foot forward in order to avoid the mistakes that held us back?
For sure, the engine of political polarisation is overheated and needs cooling down. Equally sure, there is a case for purification of the Maltese political waters, which are polluted daily by ad hominem arguments and blatant attempts bent on character assassination.
All of this has tended progressively to poison Malta’s democratic lifeblood and to suffocate reason by dogma.
Democracy rests on the assumption of pluralism and the competition of ideas. It takes is strength from fair controversy, but it is meaningless without tolerance. It rejuvenates itself each time people realise that life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are aging supernumeraries of the ancien regime and those in cemeteries and lunatic asylums.
Perhaps the biggest mistake repeatedly committed by some of our politicians was their refusal to admit their own failures and their persistence in justifying failed policies with their meaningless loquacity.
There has so often been a deplorable lack of professionalism and scarce respect for genuine meritocracy.
There has been lack of involvement in the life of the nation on the part of the intellectual class. Intellectuals are expected to involve themselves in the search for the truth and to be forthright in proclaiming it.
They should bring their detached criticism to bear on the institutions and to keep political and economic power under scrutiny.
This they have failed to do, being, very often, unwilling to criticise their colleagues or teammates, and reluctant to give priority to the national interest over their sectarian or partisan considerations.
History will record in due course that Malta’s political “ruling” class, which consists of a majority of intellectuals on each side of the political divide, shirked the onus of leading from the front. Many shrank from the heat of direct involvement. Some lacked the stamina of standing up to vilification by demagogues. Others did not have the stomach to involve themselves in political fire fights. Others still were interested in money-making.
Malta has been the loser. Malta’s intellectual class could have provided the leaven to make Maltese democracy wholesome. The university had the potential to remedy matters if there was more active and focussed leaders at the top.
On the economic front, the need for accelerated change is all too obvious. Malta has been sinking under the weight of an unprecedented spurt of taxation, mounting debt and over-spending.
Repeated resolutions to reverse these trends have been honoured only in the breach. The government misguidedly tried to meet part of this crisis by selling the family jewels. This is a finite source of income hardly adequate to meet our debt snowball.
The two obvious emergency solutions called for are to curtail expenditure and to embark on a vigorous programme conducive to positive growth.
This is sooner said than done, considering that Malta must simultaneously countenance the imperatives of restructuring imposed by the iron laws of competitivity.
Much too much precious time has been lost in putting our house in order.
The business institutions and the trade unions must proceed from convergence to consensus in this area where bread is rapidly becoming more important than politics.
Change is of the essence. A sense of purpose is just as important.
It is worth recalling a wise dictum by Andre Gide in this context: “One doesn’t discover new lands without being ready to lose sight of the shore.”
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