Walking into Valletta a few days ago I caught sight of Chris Fearne, former deputy prime minister and Labour party deputy leader. He seemed as cocky as ever, striding along as if the world owed him a few reverential glances, unconcerned, or seemingly unconcerned, about anything he was involved in.
Seeing him strutting past reminded me that he was involved, or allegedly involved, in one of the biggest political scandals that have ever hit this little isle. Actually, he is still embroiled at the moment, as he is undergoing criminal proceedings connected to the Steward/Vitals case.
Engulfed as we are by never-ending scandals, these horrors now have a shelf life of a few days, if at all.
Fearne is obviously less of a scoundrel than the other Labour rogues, Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri. But still a scoundrel who allowed the horrors that happened under the Labour administrations of Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela to go unchecked, unchallenged, at least in public where it should all have come out.
Some months ago, when the Vitals case started, another former minister was implicated and arraigned. Edward Scicluna, who was Central Bank Governor, suspended himself from the chairmanship, till he undergoes his criminal proceedings.
It's crazy to think that such momentous events are already getting lost in our memory. The spate of scandals, the enormity of them, has totally transformed us into zombies.
In most cases, what is most horrific is that the scandal is always seen as a money problem. People, including civil society activists, emphasised in the Edward Scicluna case, how greedy he was and how he was trying to remain on full pay. The critics seemed to imply that the main problem, or one of the main ones, is that he took too much money.
But this is way beyond the money.
Money stolen, money in salaries or consultancies, taken when it is not your due, is abominable. But the action itself, the abuse of power, the fact that the perpetrators feel that they are immune from all repercussions, is much worse than the money taken. The fact that you feel you can break into a house and take all you wish is much worse than the assets taken. The thieves' breaking of the bond of ownership, the thieves deciding that what is yours can be theirs, goes way beyond the actual thievery.
All focus centred around the pecuniary reward, the money that was stolen, or that should not have been given, to these politicians or the ones around them.
When we turn it all into merely a pecuniary problem, the problem is diluted.
In the same vein, what the former minister of tourism did went way beyond the amount of money he enabled his partner to get. Parliament, that supposedly fount of founts of leadership, by turning the whole episode into mere insistence on Amanda Muscat repaying her ill-gotten gains, delivered a total charade of justice.
Clayton Bartolo, the former minister and former member of the Labour Party is still in parliament. Therefore, he is an honourable gentleman.
That Parliament itself does not realise that such dishonourable behaviour should see you flung out of Parliament is a sad state of affairs.
The young are often criticised because all they care about is money, that they have lost the true value of life except what is calculated by material stuff. When we reduce everything to what is stolen and do not emphasise the crime, we are debasing the whole essence of values, of propriety, of good living.
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