Over the years, there has been a constant refrain in Maltese politics under each and every administration: it is necessary to correct for the injustices committed by the previous administration. If this is not done, a government risks losing the trust of supporters and bleeds votes.
Now, not all alleged “injustices” are genuinely so but it is also true unfortunately that certain injustices would have been really committed. In which case, the question is how can they be remedied? Administratively? ... but would this not end up being a less than transparent procedure? So, by judicial process? ... but would this not entail endless delays?
Meanwhile, those who wish to act in good faith, cannot simply overlook the possibility that to correct for an injustice, one would be creating another one. Clearly, the victim of an injustice is hardly going to be much troubled about this. Yet the result would be to continue to stretch out into the future the chain of injustices.
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PANDEMIC
When pandemics threaten, it sems as if medical and health authorities the world over become over-timid, fearing that with what they could say or do, they would panic people. One understands their fear and why they remain prudent when making public announcements.
On the other hand, given how matters develop these days, it is difficult to contain out-of-place rumours that quickly attain a global reach via the social media. The question then is: what’s best – to publish the whole scenario, as potentially frightening as it might be? or to keep back and publish only known facts, while making full arrangements to counter all potential negative outcomes?
It might not be a bad strategy to ensure right from the start that people are reasonably informed of the full repercussions that could follow from the rapid spread of a disease. In this way, people would have been warned early enough about the extent of the threat they face and would understand better why and how to behave in a given way.
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SANDERS?
From the current field of Democratic contenders for the US Presidency, for ideological reasons, I prefer Bernie Sanders. He’s leftwing, actually a socialist, and talks straight about the social inequalities that prevail in the US, and in equal measure, about the huge power exercised by the big capitalist corporations over American society.
Still, given that mayor Pete Buttigieg is also one of the contenders, if I were a delegate for the Democrats, I would not have been able to vote for Sanders but would support Buttigieg.
I doubt whether Buttigieg will be able to survive the coming few weeks. His message should go down well with centrist voters – and elections are won on the basis of their support. Yet for Democrats, it is crucial to also marshall the support of lower income strata of the population, especially among blacks and Latinos. It does not seem like the mayor has their backing.
The claim is that in a runoff between Sanders and Trump, the latter would surely prevail. I have up to now seen no forecast predicting who would win were Trump to face Buttigieg.