Stories about how court cases are being processed and about police investigations or their lack, arouse disquiet beyond the political controversies they give rise to. Especially if little to no explanation is provided about what has happened and why.
In the final analysis, the whole issue should not depend on political considerations. Even in the US, where police commissioners and attorney generals are elected by popular vote, it is (mostly) unacceptable that that should be the case. The public official and the institution he/she runs should be able to take effective action and then remain publicly accountable for the outcome.
The idea that there should be a minister to respond or not for the actions of these officials hardly makes sense. Unless they would be serving as a screen for the minister – which would then make the lack of accountability a demonstration of an administration that is doubly out of skew. I do not want to believe that this is the case in Malta.
Still in the sectors at reference, we’re not looking good.
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TIT FOR TAT
For this month’s plenary session of the European Parliament, a raft of leading measures in the Green Deal (meant to counter global warming) came to the vote. The measures were underpinned by compromises reached between the political groups.
The group of the People’s Party, via a few of its members who put forward an amendment in their own name, tried to soften the impact of some measures on the table. They knew that the Socialists and the Greens in no way could agree with this, but on the back of votes from the extreme right, the amendment was passed and became an integral part of the package. Here, the Socialists and the Greens decided to vote against the package as a whole. On the back of votes from the extreme right, which never passes an opportunity to vote no, Parliament then voted down the whole draft law. The Popular Party came out strongly to criticise the Socialists and the Greens for having aligned themselves with the extreme right.
No matter where, humbug is humbug.
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COLLECTING
I happened to have read an essay by the literary critic Walter Benjamin only the previous day that a correspondent in a Maltese daily quoted from it and commented on the excerpt that had impressed me most. The piece was about book collectors and what motivates them.
As an avid book collector, Benjamin remarks how when people see the books one has amassed, they immediately ask whether the collector has read them all. He recalls how Anatole France dealt with such a question: Of course not. I have hardly read ten percent of them. But do you believe that collectors of hats or of chinaware wear all the hats on show or that they drink tea out of all the china cups in their collection?
Benjamin describes the pleasure one feels at the close physical presence of books. His greatest pleasure came from the remembrance of how and when given books were acquired... and of the best bargains he succeeded to drive.
Many points he makes I could follow from my own experience. Which I imagine resembles the experiences shared by all kinds of collectors, not just those fixated on books. Benjamn committed suicide while on the run from Nazi territory at the start of the Second World War, prior to which he had to sell all his library very fast.