In the wake of the heinous murder of Mrs Caruana Galizia, I fear it will be impossible to arrive at the stage of an appropriate closure covering all parties involved. Such closure would require that the suffering and failures are recognized, agreed, accepted and “compensated” all round.
Assessments of what really happened are still too divergent and one cannot see how they can be brought closer to each other. Instead of “assessment” one could have said “interests”. The murder and its aftermath have become too entangled in contrasting perspectives regarding the truth of the whole issue. To complicate matters, we have had in leading roles, legal personalities who carried a too evident political baggage.
So now, we witness futile symbolic and concrete gestures being made, intended to create points of contact around which a united point of view could emerge to bring all involved under one banner. That is not happening. One side claims that not enough is being done to ensure that responsibilites are acknowledged and compensated for. The other side notes how the whole truth is not being said, not least about the victim herself.
There can be no satisfactory closure if one direction does not exist along which reconciliation (if that is the right word) is being sought. Or at least if there are two directions or more in line about the whole issue, these are not being made to converge.
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JOBS
I’m sure it’s already been carried out or is in the process of being undertaken, for it is crucial: a study about the job situation in the private sector.
In the coming weeks and months, all governments, Malta’s included, will be tapering off the rate by which they are subsidizing the economy in order to keep it afloat and absorb the hits dealt by the pandemic. State aid to enterprises could hardly be maintained forever – that was knowledge shared by all.
However, the reduction and total removal of subsidies will likely impact heavily on private sector jobs. Quite a number could end up becoming non-viable.
This has no connection with partisan politics but the chances are significant that the matter could get tangled with electoral calculations done by political and by economic decision makers.
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FRIENDS OF FRIENDS
It is extremely clear that this country is still caught in a system of management which depends heavily on networks run by friends of friends. When PN governments ruled the roost, this claim would be ridiculed. No longer. Frontliners of the party currently in the Opposition and their fellow travellers consistently make it with respect to the Labour government.
But the phenomenon persists hugely in their own camp – or whatever remains of it.
One can realize this in the way by which news and comments are slanted. How for instance is it only Pilatus Bank which gets mentioned – not as well one or two other financial institutions where certain individuals were involved?
How for instance does it happen that when the issue arises of who attended – or failed to – the wedding of the owner of the said Pilatus Bank, among the guests from Malta only some names get mentioned while others of equivalent calibre are passed over?
Friends of friends? In “our” Malta? And up and down its breadth and length? Of course not... that only happens on one side of the fence!