Road manners – Alfred Sant
The more our roads get packed with cars, the greater the number of traffic incidents, reported or overlooked. More and more people are coming face to face with issues of conflict, sympathy, solidarity, grief...
All things considered, how can a balanced judgement be reached about the positives and the negatives? It does depend on who one talks to.
Ihave met people who insist that: drivers fail to use their car indicators to show in which direction they intend to drive; drivers ignore zebra crossings; drivers indulge in careless parking without any regard for other drivers or pedestrians; no courtesy is shown towards mothers with children or the elderly; cars are driven at excessive speeds in narrow streets and corners; cars, motorcycles, bicycles and now electric scooters are driven pellmell through places where people assemble...
And now for the assessment of others: drivers continually stop to allow passage to pedestrians in main roads where traffic lights are not functioning; in places where parking space is limited, motorists agree between them regarding how to share the available space; drivers do follow the rules set for zebra crossings...
Digital impacts
I attended a meeting of MEPs last week during which we discussed whether there was a need to change working procedures in the European Parliament, since electronic means of communication are increasingly being used.
Practically all those present were of the view that we needed to go back to how meetings were being held “previously”... that is to say, “normal” meetings at which all attendees would be physically present in the same chamber. What I found interesting was the way in which my MEP colleagues presented their arguments.
...That’s how we always worked... If we do not do this, our meetings will lose most of what gives them meaning...Parliaments function through debates and discussion that take place on a face to face basis... and so on.
All points made were valid and indeed based on the experience accumulated by Parliaments over the centuries. But one could hardly fail to wonder whether – growing up as they are in a digital world that is completely different from the one their predecessors lived in – the new generations of today and tomorrow will ever understand and appreciate all claims that reflect past traditions.
European Defence Union
Following the defeat of “the West” in Afganistan, the call in Europe became more strident: The US is not to be trusted. Europe is an economic giant and a political and military dwarf. To face the challenges posed by China, global jihad and Russia, a new way forward is required. This can only take the form of a common defence policy for Europe.
Is this true? That seems to be the meaning of what Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated at the European Parliament. It seems to be what many European voices from the political right-centre-left are declaring. They have sufficient weight to get the idea off the ground. And the project for a common defence union could gather speed.
There might be a risk in all this that is being discounted. Could the project for a European common defence end up as another adventure similar to that of the Americans in Afghanistan?
One direction?
In the wake of the heinous murder of Mrs Caruana Galizia, I fear it will be impossible to arrive at the stage of an appropriate closure covering all parties involved. Such closure would require that the suffering and failures are recognized, agreed, accepted and “compensated” all round.
Assessments of what really happened are still too divergent and one cannot see how they can be brought closer to each other. Instead of “assessment” one could have said “interests”. The murder and its aftermath have become too entangled in contrasting perspectives regarding the truth of the whole issue. To complicate matters, we have had in leading roles, legal personalities who carried a too evident political baggage.
So now, we witness futile symbolic and concrete gestures being made, intended to create points of contact around which a united point of view could emerge to bring all involved under one banner. That is not happening. One side claims that not enough is being done to ensure that responsibilites are acknowledged and compensated for. The other side notes how the whole truth is not being said, not least about the victim herself.
There can be no satisfactory closure if one direction does not exist along which reconciliation (if that is the right word) is being sought. Or at least if there are two directions or more in line about the whole issue, these are not being made to converge.
Jobs
I’m sure it’s already been carried out or is in the process of being undertaken, for it is crucial: a study about the job situation in the private sector.
In the coming weeks and months, all governments, Malta’s included, will be tapering off the rate by which they are subsidizing the economy in order to keep it afloat and absorb the hits dealt by the pandemic. State aid to enterprises could hardly be maintained forever – that was knowledge shared by all.
However, the reduction and total removal of subsidies will likely impact heavily on private sector jobs. Quite a number could end up becoming non-viable.
This has no connection with partisan politics but the chances are significant that the matter could get tangled with electoral calculations done by political and by economic decision makers.
Friends of friends
It is extremely clear that this country is still caught in a system of management which depends heavily on networks run by friends of friends. When PN governments ruled the roost, this claim would be ridiculed. No longer. Frontliners of the party currently in the Opposition and their fellow travellers consistently make it with respect to the Labour government.
But the phenomenon persists hugely in their own camp – or whatever remains of it.
One can realize this in the way by which news and comments are slanted. How, for instance, is it only Pilatus Bank which gets mentioned – not one or two other financial institutions as well where certain individuals were involved?
How, for instance, does it happen that when the issue arises of who attended – or failed to – the wedding of the owner of the said Pilatus Bank, among the guests from Malta only some names get mentioned while others of equivalent calibre are passed over?
Friends of friends? In “our” Malta? And up and down its breadth and length? Of course not... that only happens on one side of the fence!