Performance after performance, recital after recital and we come to that time of the year when the pantomime takes centre stage.  Out comes the Dame and her fancy costumes producing all sorts of surprises from under her skirts.  The chorus shouts “behind you”, the sweets fly onto the audience and some poor soul has to endure the jeers and jokes on stage, whilst telling everyone what they got for Christmas!  It always surprises me at the kind of gifts children receive nowadays.  Gone is Enid Blyton and the Jackie annual.  But parents are more up to date with the latest trend and anything that can make the kids happy is on Santa’s list.

It would appear that we had a little preview of this year’s panto with the street performance of Minister Evarist Bartolo flanked by the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and the intrepid Mario Frendo looking for the elusive reply as to when this whole bit of theatre began. 

Was it February, April, or August?  When did Minister Bartolo receive the visit from his prima donna?  When did the magic carpet fly? 

And how is that the prime minister is so forgetful these days?  Perhaps he has too much on his mind and is being rather selective in what he stores in his memory.  It would be normal to think that his private secretary or one of the aides would look up the relative information and remind him, before he faces the press and parliament. 

But maybe they too are all occupied these days in recruiting unemployed candidates for the latest employment scheme with the GWU.  Or the visa department is running short of injured patients from Libya and they need to extend their catchment area to the UK now for the Russians who need to keep their international options open. 

Whatever is the case, we were regaled by a great performance from Bartolo who has all the makings of a first rate black knight, whilst his side-kick spun round and produced whatever answer suited the camera or microphone before him.  If it is Media Link then the answer is I believe Evarist.  If it’s One then the answer is Rizzo is my friend. 

As the rest of the ministers and MPs approach the stage, they are slightly confused by the plot but manage to pick up their pace enough to escape further comment.  And the chorus sings We are the World.

Whatever the time frames were, we are sufficiently experienced now to read between the lines. 

At the time of the Panama Papers scenario, with Minister Konrad Mizzi and Chief of Staff Keith Schembri facing the music, Minister Bartolo was a lone voice in the crowd, to stand up and cry “Shame”.  It was another bit of comedy from the stage meant only to send a message to someone in the audience, as his own fate was being deliberated.  A nice little understanding was crafted behind the scenes and the final bow was taken with all the audience clapping and the actors feeling confident over their performance.

Because the truth here is that everyone of the Malta Taghna lkoll protagonists has a nice little honey pot set up for them.  For some, the bees have been so busy that they needed to export the honey to another pot in Panama.  For others, the local market was good enough. 

Let us expose this sick slogan of Malta taghna Ilkoll for what it is – a perverse, twisted, greedy, corrupt, opportunistic, Mintoffian, bit of pantomime that entertains the masses. 

Malta is not Cuba.  It is not held by one man who decides the fortune of the peasants and offers them health and education and little else, whilst himself amassing a fortune.  Where were the peasants before so?  Most likely, building luxury properties around the island, becoming doctors and teachers and accountants, opening small businesses and travelling abroad for further education, becoming employed in well paid careers.   Fitting luxury kitchens into their new flat and ditching Maltese for English. 

Whoever looked at Malta under Gonzi and saw Fidel Castro must have been living in the jungle for the past two decades.  Profiting on the back of the peasants, though, was a good pretext for getting their hands on the honey pot.  One for each of those who had fought alongside on One TV and led the band to victory.

With a regular flow now, we have uncovered several of the pots already.  It is quite a delusion to imagine that they could keep them hidden, whilst getting their fingers sticky. 

And funnily enough, the moral of the story keeps emerging.  Because any good pantomime should deliver a good moral, show the truth behind the lies and expose the baddies. 

Just one of the misconceptions of Malta Taghna Ilkoll is that they thought they could handle the delivery of it and know exactly who will be needing to come in on it.  There were the newcomers with rolls of building plans under their arms, the previously mentioned band of journalists and TV presenters, the friends of Joseph, the sales clerks who found Positions of Trust, the old timers and the newly converted. 

But they forgot that for many, the whole concept meant nothing at all, nothing more than “brush your teeth before you sleep”.  There could be some benefit in it but who doesn’t know that already? 

And what is Malta really?  Who created the materialistic, physical entity that we are supposed to have a right to?  That we can simply carve into chunks to stick a stake into and claim the plot.  This is not the far west.  There is here a really malevolent twist, from the right to own property, to the right of the establishment to your property. 

Malta is a place, a land where we live and from where we learnt a certain culture and identity.  It is not owned by the government.  It is not owned by the people.  We have a right over its borders to the extent that we abide by laws created to define it as a particular territory over which we have responsibility to take care of it and its inhabitants.  But who, in reality is the generation that now says that Malta belongs to it?  What happens with the next generations?  Does it belong to them too or not?  Will the right be inherited or is it a one-time licence?  Make hay whilst the sun shines? Nothing more than fiction and false fiction at that.

In short, let’s bury this fabrication once and for all and accept that it is fictitious and falsely created.  And with it, we can also dump the sister slogan of “alternative government”.  Is there only one government that is the standard bench mark and the rest are an alternative to that one government?  We have system, or we are supposed to have, a pluralistic, democratic party system with elections and parties to vote for.  We could vote for one party or another. Each of them are equally eligible to form a government if elected.  

It is the job of each of them to convince the electorate that they have their interests, security and the economy of the country as their priority but none of them have the right to take over the whole country and corrupt it from top to bottom whilst peddling pantomimes. 

We don’t look for alternatives to corruption, for example.  We look for a decent government that has nothing to do with corruption.