Perhaps it would be better if I cancel what follows... For when one takes pains to note how matters have been going well up to the present, they could in short order go into the reverse! The fact remains though that this country has experienced relatively few acts of terrorism over the years. There was a horrible incident some thirty five years ago when the island provided the backdrop to the massacre carried out in a hijacked EgyptAir plane that was made to land in Malta. There was the murder of the Palestinian leader Shqaqi at a later date. And there was the almost “comic” hijack of a Libyan plane not so long ago.

The concern that the terrorist surge would reach our shores in a big way was never a distant one. It did not happen. Was it just chance? Were we lucky? Or could there been other factors that fed into the situation?

The treatment extended to a country in different sectors reflects the reputation it will have acquired and how as a result, it gets to be considered by others. To be sure, I am not suggesting we should adopt any kind of stance intended to make terrorists look at us benignly. But it does appear that the policy of neutrality which Malta has followed must have had the effect of steering us away from the eye of the terrorist storm.

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THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE COMPLAINS...

It has once more been shown how lobbying for the rule of law in Europe ends up most times a political game. The Council of Europe passed a resolution panning the Malta government’s actions to change laws and procedures that regulate the judiciary, the police and the running of state business in order to make them more stringent... What the government had done was simply to implement the “advice” given to it by the same Council or one of tis committees.

Personally I just did not like this. No matter how worthwhile the changes are, it shouldn’t be up to some outside Council to tell us what to do.

In any case, the government carried out what it had been instructed to do and did it in short order. Instead of giving recognition to the work undertaken, the members of the Council of Europe came out in criticism of how quickly the reforms were implemented and without they said, consultation with the wider society.

I hugely doubt whether the call for respect towards the rule of law in Europe can achieve a lasting and enduring progress given the superficial and politicised manner by which it is being articulated.

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EVEN IF...

There was a time when our best minds considered that the most important breakthrough we could make as a country was to discover oil. As a result, we would acquire our own natural resources and like other countries, benefit by improving our competitiveness with respect to the rest of the world.

If at that time, there were oil deposits at the bottom of the surrounding seas, then they surely are still there. But now perhaps, it’s too late to make a useful find out of them. There are diminishing returns in the use of oil since a worldwide effort is proceeding to limit the use of energy derived from sources that contribute to climate change. Coal is on the way out and shortly, oil should be exiting as well.

What we can do today is find consolation in the thought that at least we did not manage to blight the country as a whole with the pollution the oil industry could have brought in its wake. Though cynics will be tempted to claim that we actually still managed to pollute the island, in other ways...