From powerful presidents, dictators and stubborn statesmen to bishops, prime ministers and popes, there is always a time and a place for apologies to be made and accepted. It is a simple process of reconciliation, a new beginning, a timely compromise that eventually makes some sense of that reality we all have come to know as western civilisation.

It really distinguishes man and woman from the beast and re-affirms the staunch belief that contrary to Elton’s great song, sorry, after all, is not the hardest word to say. Politicians and journalists alike are perhaps the most susceptible when it comes to making apologies for the simple reason that whatever they say and whatever they write will always be there to haunt them. We have all been communists and fascists in our youth, only to evolve into hopefully better citizens willing to comprehend if not approve, eager to live with if not conform.

Only last week, the British Foreign Office had to make an embarrassing apology to the Vatican over an internal document, prepared by minor officials, which was highly offensive to the Catholic Church. It came at a time when the Vatican, spearheaded by the Pontiff himself and sundry bishops, was issuing apologies in droves over the nightmarish issue of paedophile priests practically all over the world. In that same week, the Polish President died in an unfortunate air crash on his way to an apology-laden ceremony in Russia to commemorate the victims of a WWII massacre.

For well over 65 years, the Germans and successive German governments have been doing the same thing with regard to Nazi atrocities during that same war.

The Maltese socio-political scenario has not, over the decades, lacked its famous apologies. Most recently, the Church has apologised over the horrific cases of sexual abuse of children by Maltese priests, which came as a relief to many, including the victims who now rightly demand that the Church authorities provide all the required details to the police for the necessary civil proceedings to get underway.

In the not so distant past, perhaps even a trifle late by some people’s standards, the Maltese Church had also issued an apology to “all those hurt” in the process of the politico-religious dispute of the sixties when it had gone as far as declaring it “a mortal sin” to vote Labour and, incredibly, even refusing a decent, Christian burial as well as other sacraments to Labourites who at the time had openly resisted the Church’s undemocratic and unholy stance. The irony of history was to see those very same antagonists happily working together for the benefit of the country in the following decade.

The Labour Party too, via its various leaderships, has not been afraid to say sorry over issues and events that led to people and political opponents suffering some sort of injustice and/or violence at different times of excess when the party was in power. It did so regardless of the fact that it may have only been a small minority within it that resorted to such tactics and that it may even have been intentionally provoked. The crux of the matter is that it has had the guts to do so.

Apologies are not a display of weakness but a sign of maturity. They do not cast shadows on those who make them; on the contrary, they throw a light on their integrity as a genuine movement, an evolving entity, i.e. neither a relic nor a fossil. It is those organisations, parties and governments which refuse to acknowledge their mistakes and are not ready to bury the past that can gradually turn into lifeless and meaningless monoliths of their genres. Some of them are even tempted to wrongly daub other people’s apologies as a “convenient” way of slipping out of a dark past.

We have all done, said and written things, which, with hindsight, we regret. Gradually recognising this fact is part of the healing process, a rejuvenation, ever so important in the life of people who want to be taken seriously in their work, their profession, their mission and, above all, their life.

At a time when the concept of infallibility, even in the religious psyche, no longer makes any sense, apologies will continue to be made and accepted. From errant footballers who use their hands to score or their feet to stomp on an opponent’s face, to popular singers whose recorded voices really belong to someone else, the world will hopefully never be without apologies.

Back on the local scene, however, only one organisation has thus far refused to apologise for anything – the ruling party. Apparently convinced it has a divine right to govern these islands, the Nationalist Party and its past and present henchmen have never found the right words for saying sorry for the suffering it has inflicted over the many years of its existence on at least half the population and countless generations through provocation, violence and injustice, character assassination and the sheer manipulation of our history books.

Are the Nationalists really so blameless, with hardly a blemish on their political fabric? Certainly not. They are at least as guilty and as fallible as anyone else who has been in power anywhere in the world. But they somehow expect apologies from everyone, but never bother to do so themselves.

There are so many who expect it from them. People who were falsely and publicly accused of committing things they never did, including murder, people who were brutally treated at work, refused career advancement and even sacked or mothballed simply because they happened to have different political views, and people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time during some volatile political event. The list is long and getting longer still.

Only the Nationalists believe they are perfect. It is a state of mind, alas. It is why even the expert, the trusted professional, has to either play ball or be damned. See how the Mepa auditor has been vilified for refusing to be putty in their hands. See how the Auditor General has been

soundly taken to task for his damning report on the BWSC contract with EneMalta. See how newspaper journalists and other commentators are treated when they tell the truth. See how even the justice and administration systems have often been undermined when judgements and decisions, even at supposedly autonomous authority levels, did not go the Nationalist Party way.

Everyone is wrong except the Nationalist government. Shocking revelations of scandals are quickly pooh-poohed, cases of obvious corruption are played down or even ignored, and the perpetrators of sheer political arrogance and abuse are inexplicably defended rather than chastised. Public funds are used to cement party holes. Glorious mistakes, such as the tragic purchase of nine new RJ aircraft that bankrupted Air Malta and the Fairmount contract that produced the intended coup de grace at the Drydocks, are either expediently forgotten or blatantly reinterpreted in a way to have them justified.

Apologies are for the rest of us mere mortals, alas.