He looks young enough. He looks fresh enough. He looks good enough. Just good enough to get promoted, if the school is very generous, from kinder to primary. That’s our own minister for the environment, Aaron Farrugia, who, with no irony on his face or mask, stood nodding his agreement while the lands of Miżieb and L-Aħrax were signed off to none other than the Maltese hunters.
“Hurrah,” the minister seemed to be saying, “we did it. We managed to screw up the last remaining bits of unspoilt, unencumbered, untaken over by crooks, hunters or developers, land.”
If the world’s spoofers ever fail to dredge up material to make people laugh, all they need to do is come over to Malta. Here, if a scriptwriter ever hits a writer’s humour block, they will quickly find that our reality is full of stories too crazy to believe. If we weren’t so tragic, we could start exporting a new brand of imbecility.
If anyone thinks this was going slightly overboard, just wait for more brazen idiocy from Aaron’s handiwork.
Innocent, goodly Aaron met the media a few days after the nefarious, hidden-from-the-press, signing of the deed. He was asked if he agreed with giving the concession of those two tracts of land to the hunters.
He put on his gravest expression and wisely replied: “Over the past few days I have spoken to a lot of people and I understand that there has been justified criticism from those who want open spaces.”
Politicians, Aaron solemnly decreed, need to learn from this criticism.
I’m not sure if I should cry, laugh, or tear my ears out. Maybe he’d get inspired to really defend our environment and deserve being given Aaron’s rod.
This is the minister in charge of looking after our habitat, who should know at least a few rudimentary things connected to wellbeing and bettering of our life.
And this man, given such an important position, has to be reminded by people that we need open spaces?
Is this man real? Or is he a full-blown clown? His face, in pictures and videos, is serious enough.
He should be demoted and marched straight off to primary school. I’m sure a little boy or girl going to school these last days knows better.
There’s more. Much more.
When asked the burning question whether our valiant Aaron agreed with the done deal, he of awarding prime sites to wanton killers of birds was further prodded about it. Rumour, he was told, had it that he had opposed the deal in cabinet.
When he heard this question, he looked on – no, he preened on – saying that what goes on in cabinet stays with cabinet. According to him, they discussed and then they agreed – collectively and in unison – as one. They were, he said, in final agreement “bħal ponn” (like a fist).
Beautiful metaphor that of a fist: a fist in our gut, a fist in the lung of the country, a total knock-out blow by the iron-fisted paladins of the Labour Party, a party which calls itself left-wing. Isn’t left-wing supposedly pro-environment? Isn’t hunting a form of entertainment which only the landed, the rich, and therefore the right-wing, should enjoy?
Everything we do is opposite of what it should be. Black is white and the damnable is applauded.
If Aaron Farrugia or anyone in cabinet opposed this travesty of a deed they should not have given in to it. Principle is far more important than party petty politics to curry favour with a bunch of hunters who have never shown much love for anything that flies or that is connected to the environment.
This is a land of horrors. Our spoofs are what will kill us all. We are ruled by a handful of charlatans who have defaced our land and are depriving our country of everything that is good.
They talk down at us even after they have duped us. They expect us to applaud. And many do clap their approval.
The minister for the environment who seems to know absolutely nothing about the environment should ask the Prime Minister to dump him out of cabinet straight into a, metaphorical, dung heap. There Aaron might, at last, serve an environmental purpose as manure.
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