Some people get away with murder; others are hanged for a parking offence.

But who said life is fair?

It starts off when it is always the wrong sibling who gets a light smack on the wrist when it was the other one who provoked the tiff.

It moves on to the school, where the quietest of students accidentally drops a book that startles the teacher and gets thrown out of class just because the teacher’s having a bad day, and she would never punish naughtier students because she’s afraid they would do worse than just being noisy.

And it goes on in an office too, where the laziest, most irresponsible and most indifferent of employees can do no wrong, and sometimes even get promoted, while hard-working, committed and loyal workers are rebuked, perhaps even sacked, for something they did not do.

It happens in courts of law, where murderers walk free on a technicality because they have a good lawyer who finds a missing comma on the charge sheet while innocent people end up behind bars because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and their presence at the scene of a crime – where they stopped to give help – is enough to get them convicted.

It takes place in politics too, where competent people are forced to resign over innocuous matters while others hang on to their seat in spite of being guilty of far more serious shortcomings; and where governments lose power although they kept their country running in good order notwithstanding a mountain of difficulties, and other parties get elected just because they have more money to spend on their election campaign without having the better election programme.

What is unfortunate is that although the phrase “we should learn from history” is used very frequently in all spheres of society, this concept is hardly ever applied in real life. People tend to forget, and this is why history often does repeat itself.

Humanity never learns from its mistakes. New generations take over, and they want to experiment, change and try things that have already been tested by others and gone wrong, and yet they plunge into them just for the sake of trying, perhaps thinking that this time they will work out. Parents tell their children not to get drunk because the after-effects aren’t so pleasant, but the children believe they must get drunk to get to know what it feels like to have a hangover. It is only then that they will understand how horrible the headache is, and it is not a given that they will not get drunk again. This is just a small example.

After the end of the Second World War, there was a huge attempt to eradicate fascism all over Europe, and for a time this effort seemed to have succeeded. But, in more recent years, fascism has raised its head once again in some of Europe’s countries, ironically many of which suffered its consequences in the first half of the last century. The phenomenon is still not as powerful as it was back then, but it would not be a surprise if, within a couple of decades, we would have turned full circle.

The Second World War took place because the lessons of the First World War were not learnt, not even by those who had survived it. And it does not mean that the second will be the last.

Speaking of the Second World War, when my grandfather used to talk about it and all its hardships, I used to listen to him with awe, thinking in my mind of a youngster that it was, after all, an adventure, and little understanding how scary it must have been to run to the underground shelter on the other side of St Julian’s Bay as the bombs were raining down.

Similarly, today my kids cannot understand that when I was their age university was open to just a few and one needed a sponsor to get in for the handful of courses that existed and which did not open every year; and that MCAST had been closed down because it was felt that it wasn’t necessary. A little thing compared to the war, but still it was a tragedy for people like me who could not continue their education as they would have liked to.

We have started the last week of the election campaign. The two parties are running out of breath. They’ve said what they had to say in the last two months, and will continue to repeat it right until the last moment. In public, they will do it in mass meetings and open discussions; in private they will do it with those who still need a push to use their vote on Saturday.

My regret is that the two sides have not discussed issues as well as they could have done and that both have promised goodies that will be hard to hand out. Many of them were copied from one another in a bid to win votes.

Then again, I would bet my last dollar that only a few citizens have read the two parties’ election proposals, still much less thought about them.

Today week, the country will start a new chapter. Whatever decision we collectively take, we must move on and get back into the routine of everyday life as quickly as possible.

And may the new government – whichever party wins – really learn from history and avoid repeating the mistakes that have been made in the past.

Let us really have a solid future in a Malta that belongs to all of us.

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