100 policies – Rachel Borg
How are we to measure Malta’s success in the future?
As things stand in this hot summer air, the level of success is judged by the number of votes received at an election or the approval ratings at certain controversial given times.
It is the simplest interpretation and satisfies a very large proportion of the population. It is quick to own, it boosts ego and can be neatly packaged to plant in the mind.
In order to sustain this view, the opposite is equally consumed. That is, anything other than the relation of votes to success is of no value and not even worth measuring.
Polls carry a lot of influence in this one-cart country. They ease minds and sometimes even consciences. No need to waste time going over Rosianne Cutajar’s soap opera when the polls tell us that it did not even raise a blip.
Teaching tells us that the way evil has been working in us is to convince us that a sin is not a sin. As easy as that. We are not to blame and we are absolved of any wrong-doing.
During these past 8 years it has become quite normal to look the other way, to ignore facts and consequences, and get rid of any thoughts to the contrary.
The safety of numbers is enough to promote confidence and spread so many liberal ideas that 100 will hit the mark nicely. Dr Robert Abela has told us that Labour have 100 new ideas that build on the pillars of the Labour Party. Pity you cannot play 100 at the lotto. But the next best number will be 55, a figure much easier to process than the multiple digits behind the corruption successfully planted in the system.
Maybe success is measured in personal income growth. Certainly that is an important and tactile measure. Whether it is from pension income, business, property or employment, it can be measured against the cost of living, or compared to previous pay increases or to the spending power. Clearly, the large majority have seen an improvement in their lifestyle and prospects, where others have seen a marked reduction.
However, if we are to take stock of the rise in the deficit and the real cost to the country of certain financial policies, a different picture emerges.
Policies and the fulfillment of them are another measure of success. There is not one shred of evidence to convince us that Malta has had any success at all in the area of environmental policies. This is becoming evident not just by looking around us, but in the worsening climate change in real terms.
Quality of life, human rights, freedom and democracy, and our place in the international order and global theatre have diminished to a level where we only see crooks around us, a travesty of justice and a division fostered by hate, lazy values and gross manipulation of the truth.
Which human resources manager would employ persons who do not have a clean record? Or who have a bad reference and have clearly shown themselves incapable of assuming responsibility, who are lacking discipline and show no respect to authority? Or persons who use a job to simply exploit the employer, take whatever they can in every dodgy deal possible and then protest for getting fired?
But this is Malta, where such traits actually qualify you for the job. Should anybody question the legitimacy of it, the whole force of the organization would be mobilized to drive any criticism into hell.
There was a time when Malta was awarded the GC for bravery and for outstanding service. Robert Hartman writing for the Daily Mail on Wednesday, on Her Majesty the Queen’s award of the GC to the NHS, wrote:
“Their ranks include men like Olaf Schmid, the bomb disposal legend who saved his comrades from 70 Taliban devices before he was killed by the 71st, and Jim Beaton, the royal bodyguard who took three bullets from a madman trying to kidnap Princess Anne.
They include the impossibly brave British wartime agents Odette Sansom, who narrowly survived her Gestapo torturers and Ravensbruck concentration camp, and Violette Szabo, who tragically did not.
They include the wartime population of the most heavily bombed place on earth – Malta.
And now they include the heroes of the Covid front line.
The award of the George Cross to the National Health Service is the greatest accolade a grateful nation can bestow beyond the field of battle. There is no decoration – military or civilian – comparable to the GC other than the Victoria Cross, which can only be won ‘in the presence of the enemy’.”
“…The George Cross was created by King George VI at the height of the Blitz. Up until then, there was nothing to honour the bravery of those performing astonishing acts of valour which were not ‘in the presence of the enemy’.
So the King devised a new gallantry decoration – the George Cross – to recognise ‘acts of the greatest heroism or of the most courage in circumstances of extreme danger’.”
“…Many people in Malta still proudly give their address as ‘Malta GC’. Look at the Maltese flag and there it is in the top left corner – the silver cross which bespeaks conspicuous courage. All those members of the RUC – which received the award in 1999 – feel a similar pride.”
What a long way Malta has come since that time. Independence in 1964 was also a very historic and proud day for us and later in 2004 when Malta successfully joined the European Union, the fate of the country seemed destined for good.
And here we are today. An exPrime Minister Joseph Muscat who was named Man of the Year for Corruption and the relegation to an untrustworthy country by the FATF, greylisted. Investigators in the USA and Europol follow cases of money-laundering and cover-ups, tax evasions and the breaking of international law whilst our police scratch some backs and no platitudes can cover up for the fact that crooks run free in a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen. That city has lost its soul.
The measure by popularity will fade like a currency that is no longer in circulation. Spending of millions on consultants to write speeches and reports and create election strategies will become the butt of jokes and provoke ridicule all round. Especially when those speeches, policies and reports fall on the deaf ears of those who actually matter when it comes to the real success of our country.