We all need to do our part to build the country up on solid rock. If we build it on soft clay, it will collapse, Foreign Affairs Minister Evarist Bartolo said in a Facebook post.

In an apparent reference to the unfolding political and court saga, Bartolo said the worst is when a building collapses, “burying those who are not to blame.”

Bartolo referred to the poem ‘Il-Kantilena’ which is the oldest known literary text in the Maltese language, written by Pietru Caxaru. He metaphorically linked the poem to the current situation, saying that the poem expresses very much how he is feeling at the moment.

The Labour party and the government have come under fire after the developments in the past week in which 11 people, including former Office of the Prime Minister Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, were arraigned in court in connection with two magisterial inquiries.

Bartolo wrote that he has been in politics for about 40 years, 29 of them spent in parliament.

“A sense of sadness weighs over me but at the same time a sense of freedom and new hope,” Bartolo said.

In the poem ‘Il-Kantilena’, Cixaru writes:

“My house fell, its foundations collapsed. It was not the builders’ fault, but the rock gave way.

Where I had hoped to find rock, I found loose clay.The house I was building fell. I have to build it anew, on ground that does not give way.”

With reference to the poem, Bartolo metaphorically remarked that “if we truly love our people and our country, we must all do our part to build Malta on solid rock. If we built it on loose clay, it would simply fall again.”