Time for change

It has been two weeks since Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder. Horror has turned to anger, and that anger is now turning into a realisation that as a nation we are utterly immature. In the wake of Daphne’s murder, many people, often those who are, supposedly, well educated and who occupy important positions in our society have declared that they cannot understand why we, as a nation, are asking the government for the resignation of the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General. Others have sought to influence the comments boards of the various online news portals with similar comments, and others still have been doing their best to turn non-partisan protests into something they are not.

Our Prime Minister told Christiane Amanpour on CNN that he won the election by a landslide. I can think of many leaders that Christiane Amanpour has interviewed who have won by much larger majorities than the one with which the Labour Party won the last election, but not all those elections were deemed as being fair according to international observers.

We believe that elections in Malta are democratic, by which I mean fair and not tampered with, and that is precisely the reason why we are making these demands of the Prime Minister. Not the leader of the Labour Party and not the Leader of the Opposition, but the Prime Minister of the Government of Malta. It is his job to make sure that the country is run as it should be through proper and good governance, with the necessary checks and balances to keep the three main pillars of a democratic society – the Executive, the Administrative and the Legislative – in good working order.

This is exactly what is being missed by those people who claim that they do not understand why we want the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General to resign. They fail to distinguish between the party and the government. Once an election is over, and the results announced, the winning party takes over the administration of the country through its government – that is exactly what the word government means. In his capacity as Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat is not the leader of the Labour Party, he is the leader of the country, and it is his job to make sure that the country is run properly, even if it were the case that the majority want to run it into the ground. The remainder of the country, which, as of the last election stood at about 45 per cent of the voting population, want a good government, a safe country where their rights are observed, and where they do not have to beg anyone for what rightfully belongs to them. A prime minister is there to make sure that it is a good government for everyone not just a little more than half the people, and much less for the chosen few.

As a start, this is done by appointing capable people to important positions, and not ones that will ignore investigations when they deem it most convenient to do so, or go to a fenkata, when the country’s and indeed the world’s eyes are on a particular bank. This is why we lack faith in the Police Commissioner. This is why we lack faith in the Attorney General.

The other often cited line is that we should be united in the eyes of those foreigners who dare to judge us. That would be a convenient way to hide everything under the carpet and make all the unwanted attention on the government go away. I suppose this may be reminiscent of the fact that Malta has had foreign rulers for hundreds of years. From the Phoenicians to the Arabs, the Knights to the British and everyone else in between, we have always felt more comfortable begging our hakem to feed us rather than doing it alone. For most of our history, we have lived off the crumbs of a rich man’s table.

Perhaps this explains why the majority of us are keen to obtain favours from the government rather than ask for their rights to be observed. It explains our predisposition to turn certain people into gods rather than hold them accountable for their actions. In short, the majority of us may want to remain a nation of beggars, but just because most have yet to evolve into the 21sto century, it does not mean that we all have to be so closed minded.

In any society, particularly the more developed ones, there are fewer successful people than there are common ones, there are fewer outspoken people than those who chose to ignore the truth. Those who stand out are often those who do not go with the flow. The protests organised by the Civil Society Network may have been labelled partisan by some. The women protesting in front of Castille may have been insulted by someone who fails to understand that gender equality goes beyond LGBTIQ issues. Many people may not understand what the government’s job is and have no idea of democracy. In the end, we should be grateful to the few who dare to stand up to be counted. I hope they are the catalysts to make the government grow up and do its job, and that the rest of the population also grow into a mature democracy rather than one which is dependent on its rulers and conveniently ignores the difficult decisions they have to deal with. The time for change is now.

Alexia Farrugia