There is a huge contrast in the way the PL government conducts the governance of the country. When it is comes to their lucrative deals, it is no holds barred, willing to break every rule in the book, go against standards of public life and ethics, moral or financial.  Whilst when it comes to serving the public, ensuring their wellbeing and improvement of quality of life, the same government is failing miserably and playing dangerous games, verging too on a very dark path.

This week, Prof. Andrew Azzopardi, wrote an article in this newspaper, “Children, nowhere to be seen”.  It went right to the heart of the matter and evoked a huge response in readers.  If there exists an account in government standards committee, or in the Ministry responsible for overseeing the electoral promises made by the party in Government, then surely the slack that is evident as documented in his article, concerning a wide range of topics faced by children, is the amongst the most cruel one.  Treatment of journalists is right behind it.

But a deeper look around us will bring to light numerous other inefficiencies and abuse of human rights, injustices and arrogance that have corroded the social partnership between a people and its government. Especially, though, it has lost the trust of so many.  Maybe the Prime Minister is happy to rely on the periodical trust ratings he achieves when compared to the leader of the Opposition, or amongst his own supporters and is easily ready to sound his trumpets on a weekly basis. 

This attitude only continues to add insult to injury.  Cursory replies to genuine parliamentary questions, brushed aside with a political snipe or with a poorly informed statement are leaving the public in the grip of the problems they face, deprived of the honest concern that they ought to enjoy.

There was a time when the General Workers’ Union would stand before every demand for workers’ rights.  Once their alliance with the Labour Party in power became secure, their focus turned to areas other than workers’ rights, like making money off a jobs scheme for the unemployed.

This week the UHM - Voice of the workers has ordered industrial action at Karin Grech, St Luke’s and Gozo General Hospital – the hospitals operated by Steward Health Care – after they said that the government had failed to keep its word.

The union claimed that the government had failed to keep its promise to transfer Steward Health Care employees onto its books by the 1st of January this year.   

The union said that it had given the government a one-week extension in the second week of January 2021 to make the necessary changes, but said that not only had the government failed to keep its word, it did not even reply to correspondence sent by the union.

“It did not even reply to correspondence.”  A pattern of slack which appears over and over again and could apply to each and every topic that was highlighted by Prof. Andrew Azzopardi.  In this case it applies to the rights of the nurses and staff.

Recently, too, the sad state of care at Mount Carmel Hospital and the rights of patients there were exposed.  How long more are mental health patients going to suffer this degradation? 

Prisons, again, failing to apply a modern and reformative system.  How many times did we read about inmates being found dead and no real explanation given?  Rumours of ill treatment as a practice of control are now common.

So many areas of social welfare being neglected without any accountability and becoming victim of the slack and poor level of governance.

Because we know that when it comes to dishing out permits, facilitating bank loans and guarantees for their pet projects then there is a fast lane, whether it means farmers losing their land, trees being uprooted, ODZ areas developed, petrol stations to be built in public gardens, whole chunks of public land gifted to private entrepreneurs for their business investments and so on.  Here the performance of institutions and government departments takes on a whole different strategy.

The reality of the lack of judicious respect to human rights is, recently, due to some court judgements, falling onto the Pre-1995 rent laws and the matter of tenants in the event that they are evicted from the property that they have been enjoying for just over €400 per annum, for a life-time or two.  When is the government going to own up to the abuse of the owners’ right to their property, abolish the Act and come up with a fair and just solution?  Owners who go to court, here in our country and in the European Court of Human Rights, remain treated like idiots.  Refusals from the government to deliver on the rights of the owners are standard and do not even seek to enter into the merit of the judgement.  Generation after generation are passing away without ever being able to access their property, having to pay inheritance tax on it and also being responsible for works done by the tenants on the house, that are not in conformity with regulations. 

Communities have been coming together, becoming active in seeking to defend their rights against abusive construction and development.  Noise pollution, light pollution, historic buildings demolished and replaced by hideous blocks that are completely eroding the aesthetic and value of our natural and urban environment. Their petitions are ignored. Their voice not even heard when it matters.  Nothing stands in the way of the developers and their powerful business partners.

In the ongoing spectrum of COVID 19, the elderly have been suffering through crisis and isolation.  Do we even hear a word from the Prime Minister to take some responsibility for the many lives lost?  They are played with for politics, taken out to a tombola morning in the midst of a pandemic, where all citizens are told to avoid contact.  They are hidden away in quickly assembled care homes or hospitals without any proper account given of the procedures in place to keep them protected and safe and minimize their ordeal.

Our international responsibilities in a global community are set-aside and manipulated towards greed and selfishness.  Instead of looking to cooperate and enhance principles of integration, justice and solidarity, the government is prepared to face infringements and court, whether it is to do with the IIP or with bird trapping and spring hunting or migration.

Only because this Labour government stole the market principles and made a career out of applying them in a narrow and unprincipled way, with dashes of liberal aplomb, are they able to withstand the jeopardy they have brought upon this country.