It is astonishingly, mind-blowingly, easy to get away from it all – away from the daily grind, from the daily repetitious catalogue of spin and counter-spin, from all the stories about Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and the rest. And I suspect that this is what the vast bulk of the Maltese population is doing right now.
For it is so easy – even in these days of online news portals, trigger-happy updates coming all day long on smart-phones – to switch off.
And you don’t even have to go abroad to do it. It only takes something as simple as a few days in Gozo, lounging by a pool, meeting nobody – or at least nobody from the daily work routine – and staying as far away as possible from online news, radio stations and the like. And it is guaranteed that you will lose track of what’s going on, what’s the latest gossip going around the blogs, who said what, what was the latest press release all about…
And the end result is just like missing a week or two of the popular soaps such as Eastenders or Il Secreto or whatever, and then, when you go back, you just catch up as if you’ve not missed a thing – or at least whatever you missed was not all that important.
Two important factors help a lot. The living in Malta is easy, especially in summer. There is no end to the number of pastimes to appeal to everyone. Even lounging on a deckchair, or on a beach, helps you relax and forget all the complicated skeins of our public life.
And the main television station news, if you muster enough energy to switch it on – and in time – is reassuringly bland and invariably optimistic, except for the mandatory accidents which by definition – or we would not be watching them – do not involve us at all.
In other words, it’s almost a conspiracy to smooth any and all rough edges, to ‘deresponsibilise’ the viewer, to promise a future even better than the present, which is portrayed in glowing colours.
No wonder Simon Busuttil gets looked upon as an interloper, as the man who would break up this Shangri-La, as the man who is negative, always negative. What Busuttil and his circle fail to realise is that those who do not follow the PN lead are not necessarily Labour supporters. They are people who want to get away from it all, who want an easy time, who do not want confrontation to take over the life of the country.
Let’s get this clear: many of those who feel this way are not necessarily asking for peace but rather for an easy life, one in which they do not have to think hard, make decisions or take sides.
On the other hand, this country has more than its fill of professional politicians who have to, just have to, make some sort of noise to justify their existence. And yet they too have feet of clay. On Wednesday night, just when Parliament was deciding its next business, an almighty row erupted which, it later transpired, was because some PN MP or other was objecting to some particular business tomorrow (Monday) evening and that was because there was Italy (or England) playing at that time. Or at least that is what government whip Godfrey Farrugia claimed.
All in all, it is not a bad idea that politics in Malta, usually so red-hot and confrontational, is taken down a notch or two (or more). We are talking here of what would be a local council in a medium-sized town anywhere in Europe, which has obtained positions far beyond its size whether at the European Council, Parliament or ECB.
At the same time, even if it were just a local government, it must be managed in a serious manner, due proprieties must be observed and due governance as well. Small size must not, in any way, be a synonym for haphazard management or, worse, corruption.
Summer has not even begun, schools have not yet closed, and the shutdowns are still some way off. As the country begins its annual massive shutdown, politics and all, and as everyone gets away from it all, there are dangers around every corner, unpredictable outcomes lying in wait. Hopefully, like so many storms throughout the year, most of these will give us a miss. We only notice what comes our way, and that’s a small percentage of the storms around us.
We live, survive and thrive on that slim hope.
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