Who doesn’t remember Joseph Muscat and his Amazing Rainbow-Colour Dreamcoat? It was more or less ten years ago when the Burmarrad Wonderboy mesmerised the nation.
He promised a Brave New Malta, but more importantly a Brave New Labour, that would depart from its old socialist dreams and embrace a new, liberal-progressive dream. The Wonderboy struck a Faustian bargain with different lobbies, entering Castile on a huge wave of popular support. A New Era had begun, the winds of change blew over the country, and Malta was on its way to become the Best in Europe.
In some aspects, Muscat’s government succeeded. In others, it failed. Miserably. Muscat’s model was lopsided. It wooed the markets and certain sectors of society and the economy and forsook the classes the Party had been founded to look after.
Like a truant sneaking out of class to play football with his friends, Muscat’s Labour stopped paying its Socialist International membership fee, and ultimately left the group. It also left – to their fate – the vulnerable and the downtrodden... and these people were too infatuated with Muscat’s rainbow-colour dreamcoat even to suspect that their ship had changed course.
Muscat left the Left and embraced laissez-faire, a political vision that favours the greedy, unscrupulous few at the expense of the tax-paying middle classes and the directionless lower ones. He flirted with the lobbies that clamoured for laissez-faire in certain sectors of the economy and laissez-faire in social matters and mores. He christened this flirtation “liberal-progressive”. He promised social progress and moral and economic freedom.
But in his frenzy, Muscat left out that progress and freedom are like wine: in small quantities, it complements your dinner and helps you relax; in huge quantities, it makes you drunk and accident-prone.
The accident did happen, when Muscat, Schembri, and Mizzi were drunk on power. The Panama Papers scandal exposed what was going on behind the scenes: the opening of secret companies and trusts in secretive jurisdictions to conceal monies that purportedly came from recycling businesses in the Gulf States and the renting out of a modest house in the outskirts of London.
That accident was followed by tragedy: the assassination of a journalist.
And Muscat’s downfall.
A scramble for power ensued, with one candidate speaking enigmatically of devilish pacts. The phrase has never been properly deciphered, but at the time it was rumoured it could be a reference to the socialist colours that had run from Muscat’s Rainbow Labour.
Indeed, a current claimed that with Robert Abela at the helm, Labour would return to its socialist roots. This current couldn’t have been more mistaken.
Under Robert Abela, Labour has doggedly continued prowling the streets, looking for morsels of liberal and progressive meat.
According to the latest European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey, the rate of poverty in Malta increased by 0.4% in 2021 when compared to 2020: 20.3% of the population.
While the poor got poorer, the middle-class started feeling the pinch. In September 2022, KPMG issued a report stating that it computed Malta’s Housing Affordability Index at 76.4%: “a household earning the median income would only be able to borrow 76.4% of the financing required to purchase a median-priced apartment”.
The Party that its supporters knew as the champion of the vulnerable and the downtrodden was now contributing to the impoverishment of the middle and lower classes, in the name of an economic freedom that benefitted the greedy few.
But the same Party – despite the change in leadership – also gave in to the siren’s song of radical personal and moral freedom.
Despite its new leader’s banging on his chest that pro-abortion lobbyists would find in him their staunchest enemy, steadfastly defending life from conception, Labour is now pushing an abortion law that will eliminate the most vulnerable, the weakest members of society – the unborn.
The son of the Deputy Leader who abandoned his party in 1998, contributing to its defeat in those crazy early elections, is now abandoning a sane principle upheld by most Labourites: the sanctity of life.
I ask Labourites: is this the Party you voted for? Is this the Party you believed in, donated to, volunteered for?
Times change, that much is true. But principles don’t.
I ask Labour MPs: why did you contest the elections with the Labour Party? To wield power, or to strive for the principles you claim(ed) you believe(d) in?
Perhaps Silvio Parnis was derided as a simple man because he cherished Labourites’ values. He championed the vulnerable and was pro-Life. If he was derided for giving witness to Labourites’ values, what do you deserve for forsaking those same values?
Remember the core belief found in your Party’s Statute: “the health of society is measured by the progress of the weakest among its members.”
Like A Spirit
An Inspector Søren Farrugia Short Story
Inspector Søren Farrugia and his team were tasked with raiding a complex of stables rented out to illegal migrants. Scores of them like sardines in a structure designed for horses.
Undoubtedly, an ungrateful job, that Farrugia knew he’d carry out half-heartedly. After all, these were poor devils. But the law is the law.
* * * * *
The mission over and back at the Station, Inspector Farrugia sat down in the office to sip a coffee with Sergeant Laus. He went through his emails, and found one in the Spam folder he read out to the sergeant.
“Hello, I am sorry to hear the sad news about your death however I am writing this to inform you that your next of kin has initiated a process of recovering your money in our custody, but if this information is not true quickly respond before your money is transfer to the wrong person.”
They both laughed. Then, Søren opened his cabinet, grabbed the whisky and two glasses, and poured a few centilitres of the spirit in each.
“They’re also sending spam emails on behalf of the Corps,” remarked Laus.
“Yeah. Anyway, Laus, cheers! Happy New Year!”
“Happy New Year, Sir! Cheers!”
They gulped the whisky, and sat in silence, Søren’s look focussed on an invisible point in the distance.
Then he spoke. “But I can’t help thinking about those migrants,” he said. “They cross the desert. They get beaten up and generally ill-treated in Libya. And then they cross the sea...”
“Yeah,” agreed Laus. “And all this to end up... in Malta... in a stable... abused like slaves.”
“Ah, but they’re not naive. They’re trying to make the best of a dreadful situation. Life dealt them a bad hand, but they play their cards intelligently, bad as those cards are. They risk their lives – worthless lives, having been born in Africa. But they risk them, the only thing they have, to give them value. When you’ve got nothing, it’s easier to risk it all. Their aim is Italy, or further north. In Italy, they get help from the State. Then they come here and work. And they keep dividing their time between the two countries, earning money from each. It’s chaotic, but they’re used to chaos. Africa is Chaos.”
“It’s all part of big plan.”
“Big plan? I wouldn’t know, Laus. It certainly looks like a phenomenon. Many people behaving the same way, giving the impression it’s a plan. What’s for sure, Laus, it accrues benefits to the elite.”
“The elite, Sir?”
“These migrants come from failed States. Their idea of rights is blurred, at best. Their knowledge of trade unionism and workers’ rights is even more nebulous. When they join the workforce in the country that gives them asylum, they dilute the strength of the workers’ movement. They have no real knowledge of the struggles that earned the workers of the developed world their rights and entitlements. Their ignorance corrodes the cohesion of workers and employees in general. As the workers get weaker, the opposite side gets stronger.”
“You’re archaic, Inspector. You talk like a Socialist.”
“Perhaps, Laus. But in reality, I make my analysis without any political agenda in mind. The Socialist wants to change the system, to benefit the workers. I merely observe, and that’s it.”
“One wouldn’t say, Sir!”
The Inspector smiled.
“The Left,” Farrugia continued, “embraced all that liberal stuff we’re exposed to 24/7, forgetting the workers.”
“Yeah.”
Their conversation got truncated by the phone ringing.
“Let’s go,” ordered the Inspector as he hung up. “We’ve been sent to investigate a serious crime.”
“What’s it about, Sir?”
“Somebody has just reported a duck is being abused. Serious stuff, Laus.”
“A duck?”
“A duck!”
“What the ––?”
“C’mon, Laus. And mind your language, will you?”
* * * * *
As they sped through the streets, they noticed a muscle car parked by the side of the road, with the hazard lights on and the bonnet open. A middle-aged man was looking intently at the engine.
Inspector Farrugia stopped and asked the man if he needed help.
It was a beauty, a black 1969 Camaro, a relic of a bygone era, when young men were highway stars. Over here, it wasn’t Camaros or Barracudas but Capris and Escorts, sporting 1.3- and 1.5-litre engines with mufflers removed for the engines to sound bigger and more powerful. Farrugia loved Alfa Romeos – a name that, in retrospect, seemed inspired by alpha-male lovers – but he surely wasn’t indifferent to American and American-inspired muscle cars.
Those macho days were over now. The modern world, emasculated by pesticides and fatherless homes, had chosen another, dark highway. These new generations, mused the Inspector, unwittingly check-in at the woke hotel and, when they realise what kind of hotel they’re in, they run for the door, to find the passage back to the place they were before. But the night man tells them to relax. “We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
Farrugia waved bye to the muscle car owner and whisked off like there’s no tomorrow to save the duck, whistling the Eagles tune.
* * * * *
It was January, the beginning of a new year full of the same old crap. Throwing migratory humans out of the country and saving migratory birds, also out of the country.
Life was flowing by, relentlessly like a slow but stubborn river, and silently almost, like a silent spirit hovering through the night sky.
Inspector Farrugia kept asking himself whether life was actually hovering over a cemetery, and whether he had already been buried, in an unmarked grave. He felt like he had lost something he never had.
* * * * *
At least – Søren consoled himself – they had saved the agitated duck. It had quacked with what sounded like gratitude. Even a meek creature like a duck feels gratitude. Even it values its life.