As we watch Muscat's sun setting behind the hills of shame, let's have a look at some lessons we can learn from the bad experience the country's been through.
We don't need another hero
Is ours a messianic system? Are we perennially waiting for a messiah who will establish some heavenly kingdom? Are we a theocracy neurotically expecting a miracle-worker or are we a democratic republic founded on our own work? Muscat, a politician with more than half his Twitter followers made up of fake accounts, mixed up concepts for an already-mixed up people. He portrayed himself as a messiah – that is to say, a religious figure – while he delivered the ultra-secular, ultra-liberal Kingdom of the God of Money.
Do we need a messiah for this country, or do we need a talented political class with a vision that is shared and discussed by a team rather than imposed by a know-it-all spoilt brat whose judgment was compromised when he meaningfully shook hands on the fourth floor and struck pre-election backstreet deals?
Friends will be friends
The Prime Minister's friends can play a role in the country's history that's unexpected and politically unhealthy. Prime Minister Muscat's friends ended up being like the courtesans of the absolute kings of yore.
Muscat surrounded himself with friends who became the noose snaring the country's neck. Keith Schembri was linked to corruption and murder, but also to an energy rip-off that promises to strangle the nation over time. Neville Gafà got immersed in still-to-be-fully-explained "missions" to Libya. Nexia BT big-shots were lodged in Castille apparently to devise secret corporate structures for persons so important that their names couldn't be mentioned in emails. This circle of friends destroyed Muscat while damaging the country more than the Stukas of WWII.
All this indicates our country's institutional weakness, that there are no mechanisms at law which could stop such abuses.
The Prime Minister's advisors cannot be businessmen, and worse still businessmen with a finger in every pie. They cannot be ideologues who push minority aspirations to the exclusion of others. Even though minorities have to be listened to, the Government cannot become a dictatorship of the "minoritariat". The advisors cannot just be quick-witted; they have to be intellectuals and academics, who don't flatter the man but give him advice based on intelligence and knowledge not ideology or self-interest.
The fixer
In theory, anybody could become Prime Minister. In practice, we need politicians who are not fixers (and certainly don't portray themselves as such) and are not awarded the accolade of Man of the Year for Corruption. Isn't it ironic that while Muscat was enacting legislation against corruption, his crew of picaroons were busy concocting devious schemes and peculation?
We don't need fixers or power-mongers who with immature cynicism meddle with the State's institutions and with society. We need people who have gone through real experiences in life, listened to the troubles of real people (from the employee to the professional to the business magnate), and then know how to mediate between social forces and seek the common good... a leader for whom Us is more important than I, and for whom Us incorporates Them as well.
We don't need fixers who use public resources to fix and further their own careers, to attain high office in international institutions. We need politicians who seek the common good, who seek to distribute wealth fairly and efficiently, who seek to create an advanced society for all of its members.
In practice, we don't need fixers but politicians who are well-versed in constitutionalism. If the State is like an orchestra, the constitutional score cannot be played by ear; it has to be studied and the person occupying the most constitutionally important position, i.e. the conductor, has to know the music more than the musicians who follow his baton.
All of Muscat's post-Independence predecessors had undertaken formal education in matters constitutional. Giorgio Borg Olivier, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Eddie Fenech Adami, and Lawrence Gonzi were lawyers while Alfred Sant had studied at the École Nationale d'Administration. As for Dom Mintoff, he had been so long in politics that he knew the ins and outs through long exposure. Only Muscat was constitutionally illiterate... and we need to avoid having another Prime Minister equally ignorant in these matters.
The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
During the Gozo stop in his surreal Farewell Tour, Muscat let us know that he intends to be a mariner on the new captain's ship. How will this new subplot in the national soap opera unfold? (Politics, that should about plans for future action and solutions for present problems, has under Muscat degenerated into a pathetic third-rate telenovela.)
Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner tells us how calamities befall a ship after one of her sailors kills an albatross. Steve Harris' song rendition captures the essence of what happened soon after the killing: "The mariner kills the bird of good omen/ His shipmates cry against what he's done/ But when the fog clears, they justify him/ And make themselves a part of the crime."
Let this lesson be learnt by those who need to learn it.
Us and them
Malta is, or should be, a neutral state actively pursuing peace, security and social progress among all nations.
Previous Prime Ministers worked hard in this direction – just consider the Fenech Adami administration's hosting of the Bush-Gorbachev Summit way back in 1989 and Alfred Sant's role in the meeting between Palestine's Yasser Arafat and right-wing Israeli politician David Levy in 1996.
What has Muscat done in this regard? Not only did he not pursue peace, security and social progress policies, but he actually somehow got in trouble with Russia (we still don't really know the details). So much so that last July, Russia vetoed Malta's attempt to place two oil smuggling suspects on a United Nations sanctions list. (These individuals were at the centre of a €30 million fuel smuggling ring involving Libya and Italian Mafia associates.) What had Muscat been up to in this case?
We don't need Prime Ministers who think they're so smart they can outwit global or regional powers. We're a micro-State and we have to behave as such. So, no delusions of grandeur or other bouts of megalomania from future Prime Ministers.
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The question for businessmen is: WHY?
Why, when you already have all that money, do you use cocaine, do you engage in football match fixing, do you bribe politicians with the intention of grabbing more money, do you commission a murder to hide your illicit and illegal activities?
Why don't you use your money to feed the poor? To found and run institutes for orphans, the downtrodden, the terminally ill, domestically-abused women, pregnant teenagers who are at a crossroads, drug abusers, victims of gambling? Why don't you offer scholarships to deserving youngsters, or, better still, open and fund a tertiary-education college for highly-specialised fields (unlike Muscat's fake university that tried to gobble up public land)?
You could do so much good with your money, and instead you get embroiled in illegalities and even murder a journalist who tried to uncover your illegalities! Why? What's the buzz? What's the kick you get out of it?
We don't need Prime Ministers who accept expensive gifts from such people. Decent Prime Ministers would tell such people not to buy gifts but to donate the money to charity and to the needy instead. Why, is Muscat so needy that he needs a bottle of wine and a wristwatch? (The questions raised on gifts made to the State and office-holders prior to 2013 seem to insinuate a certain neediness, which could be more psychological than financial.)
When you examine these people's behaviour under the morality microscope, you understand their underclass worldview and modus operandi...
And the question for the population is: WHY?
Why give the benefit of the doubt to a politician? In general. And, in particular, why give it to a politician who, when he could choose, didn't give others the same benefit? Why give this benefit to Muscat when he pushed Godfrey Farrugia to resign over the erection of a tent outside Mater Dei Hospital? Why, when he fired Manwel Mallia because Dr Mallia's chauffeur opened fire not on the Minister's orders?
In both cases, the benefit of the doubt could have been a reasonable option for Muscat. Instead he chose to give both of them the sack. So why afford Muscat the benefit of the doubt for unreasonably protecting his Chief of Staff and favourite Minister when they were caught red-handed owning secret offshore corporate structures clearly opened to receive funds from suspect sources? I'm not arguing about Muscat's intentions here. I'm questioning the reasoning of the majority of the electorate. Why the leniency? Why the readiness to forgive, or, at least, to afford the benefit of the doubt?
One could argue that Muscat is a narcissistic psychopath who can fool thousands of people. Could be, even though I don't subscribe to this school of thought. Something tells me that there's a different angle to the story.
Sometimes people want to be hoodwinked. The victim sometimes wants to be the victim. It's a bit like that controversial scene from Gone With The Wind when, at the bottom of that imposing staircase, Scarlett wants to be "ravished" by Rhett. The electorate seemed to enjoy being Wily Muscat's accomplice-victim in his shenanigans. As if people knew what was going on and still wanted to participate. In a sense, it was like an archetypal Biblical story, when a people decides collectively to break the covenant with the Sacred, the "Sacred" being a byword for morality. Individuals were willing to give up their responsibility of their own relationship to the Truth to Muscat and constantly lie to themselves.
And now because of this collective behaviour, read what has been written about us in the international press in the last days of 2019.
On November 27, Bloomberg argued that "Malta proves oligarchs aren't all Eastern Europeans. ... Oligarchs who purchase political influence aren't just a post-Communist phenomenon."
On December 3, The Guardian claimed that "only now, two years after Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder, is it becoming clear just how rotten the [Maltese] State really is."
On December 4, The Telegraph described how "Malta went from perfect holidays destination to scandal-ridden State."
On December 5, The Atlantic wrote that "Malta is not just a Mediterranean backwater; it's a back door – into Europe's banking system, into the visa-free travel accorded by its European passports, into the protection of European rule of law and the values of human rights and the free press that the EU has been created to uphold. It is hard to imagine the government of any other EU country staying intact under similar circumstances."
On December 11, The Economist observed that "amid all the uncertainties on Malta today, one thing seems clear ... A country that was once Europe's bridge to Africa and the Middle East has now become a pariah."
Thank you, Muscat. Thank you so very much.
My Personal Library (82)
In the dystopian novel trilogy The Hunger Games, the Bildungsroman written by Suzanne Collins, the dictatorial government seated in Capitol City continuously issues slogans to convince the people that Panem (of which Capitol is the capital) is indeed the best country to be in and that the rulers of Panem are protecting the population and showed mercy in the "dark days", for which the population needs to be grateful.
Slogans (or propaganda) are the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist. This is what the rulers of Capitol are continuously engaged in throughout the novels.
If you watched Joseph Muscat's end-of-year (but also end-of-career) speech, you would be excused if you thought you were reading The Hunger Games and its portrayal of the propaganda of the rulers of Capitol.