To most, it is an obvious fact that we live in interesting - and dreadful - times. The world is not a happy place right now. When anyone, in whichever part of the planet, utters or does something outrageous, few are expected to care or comment too vociferously. Too much is happening to keep up or to show our anger at all the horror.
Maybe this - our silence, our indifference - is what makes us instruments of the horror. We somehow become part of the horror itself.
However, amongst all this tsunami of worldwide words, actions, threats, and disestablishing of old allegiances, a few local things which go unnoticed are beyond belief.
Granted that what happens here hardly matters beyond our own little fishpond. Try as we do to act as if we are relevant, this will not change the fact that Malta, like several other even larger countries, is not an overly important nation.
Yet what we do here and what we let pass as if nothing matters is of consequence to our wellbeing, to us as a country.
Joseph Muscat, in one of these inane podcasts he is invited to, basically declared that we - we, the Maltese people - are corsairs. He announced, with a wide grin, that we live on the brink of legality. He said that most things we do are just about right; just enough to be within the confines of legal boundaries. He went on to say that Malta has always been like this: we are and have always been, he added, traders.
And so, the obvious inference is, because we have been traders, we are corsairs. We are pirates but legal ones; we are always ready - and in fact he exhorted us all to be even more daring - to go by the statute and stop there. The spirit of the law, the idea that we should be bound by ethics, and values, is anathema to our former, now thankfully removed, prime minister. Not just removed from office but hopefully dumped in the bins of history.
Local corsairs, of course, were marauders, pirates, but given a seal of lawful approval by the Order of St John. As long as the Order got their fair share of the loot, all was fine with the world and with our ennobled knights.
Back then piracy was legalised and given a better shade. Shady dealings made legitimate by the governors of the land. Notwithstanding, it was still piracy and it was still looting, thievery, murder. It was still intrinsically, and from an ethical point of view, totally reprehensible and wrong.
Whether we should condemn the Order or the corsairs of old, or the whole lot, is not relevant. But it was looting, piracy, taking what was not yours or of the Order. Whether the Order of St John, this most Christian of organisations, made this thievery legal, it remained thievery, nonetheless.
The wonderful thing called hindsight allows us to see all this in a clearer way. But, even if we ignore the moral high ground and do not condemn the Order or the corsairs themselves, we cannot fail to see that the art of the corsair was based on piracy.
To still call the power, the role, the success, of corsairs a good trait is way beyond deplorable.
Our country has gone - and is still going - through one of the worst stages in its history since independence. And this is where our world view, or rather the way the world views us, is important. Our last years have been mired in bad decisions: defence by the authorities of people involved in wrongdoing; murder of a journalist and then the subsequent coverups, denials, police collusion in connection to the murder investigation; money laundering accusations connected to the highest personalities of government.
All this has made us, in the eyes of the world out there, a country which is close to roguery. A country which has no true belief in good governance or proper democracy. The reputation is well deserved, as the Labour Party under Joseph Muscat and now under Robert Abela has been more concerned with optics than with real transparency and proper upholding of justice and all laws.
That Robert Abela or anyone from the Labour Party does not call out or condemn Joseph Muscat for saying that we should be like corsairs is totally wrong.
When our former prime minister talks about corsairs this is not just despicable but it proves that the man had no other aim in politics than to loot the country. And it further underlines the perception that those who followed him in positions of power, by never condemning Muscat, are as guilty as he is.
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