A state of abnormal normality

Up to some time ago we all thought the world around us, as we knew it, was crumbling. All was colliding and disintegrating. But now all is fine. All is beautifully fitted, perfectly balanced. All is normal. Abnormally normal.

We, the people, or at least a few of us, had protested, calling for true and transparent justice. Europe cried out for more action and there was a hint of a new era.

Just before the Christmas cheer engulfed us, for a few weeks we thought the Auberge de Castille’s House of Cards was collapsing. Even the old kink, Joseph Muscat, looked uncharacteristically haggard, withdrawn, terrified. There was talk of a palace coup, of getting rid of the regime, and that the criminals were going to jail.

The king was down; newness and resplendent brooms were getting all ready to sweep out the corrupt and criminal and prosecute them. The feeling was that the institutions were going to be strengthened.

We, the people, or at least a few of us, had protested, calling for true and transparent justice. Europe cried out for more action and there was a hint of a new era.

There were some resignations. Not the floodgates that should have opened, but at least some. A few. Too few to mention, as one crooner once sang. Joseph Muscat promised to go as soon as the party had voted in a new leader.

As the protests dwindled, normality seemed to take over. The people’s anger lost its verve and Europe forgot about us. The international media got tired of us. The streets, instead of chants of Barra, resounded with ditties of Santa coming to town.

The short period of anger passed. And order, as only the Labour Party knows how to ordain, returned.

Then calamity hit the world: Covid-19 shook us to the core. We went into total retreat, closed borders, locked ourselves indoors, shuttered businesses and hunkered down to face off the pandemic from hell.

The Maltese people, always fickle and little interested in what goes on in politics and in Castille, got even more distracted. All was forgotten and

Robert Abela was rarely criticised.

He fumbled. His ministers bumbled along and went on with their old ways. Covid might have destroyed the economy but it definitely gave Labour a good breather. Most people have forgotten there was anything wrong with the old regime; Robert Abela has become the new hero. The king of old is old, long live King Robert.

Abela and the “new” regime insist on defending the old crooks. The new brooms have proved equally incompetent at sweeping away the bad stuff. Only thing they are adept at is sweeping it all under the carpet.

The new king, the beloved Robert Abela, has also decided to become our own national superhero. He has announced to one and all that the pandemic has been beaten. He has strangled the beast. Won the war, as he so eloquently announced on One TV, super for spin. The wise king, the lord protector, has declared that all is well with the island. We can go out and party.

Abela loves repeating that all is normal, that we are back to our old state of tranquillity. The tranquillity of having his deputy leader plunged in such horrors that, instead of firing him on the spot, he politely asks him to step aside for the good of the party.

“All is normal,” sing the hymnsters of this totally inept government. “All is functioning,” cry the prime minister and his cabinet of fools.

“All that is happening,” they intone in near-unison, when questioned by bemused reporters, “is proof that the institutions are working perfectly.”

It’s interesting that this mantra about the institutions working was also loved, and repeated ad nauseam, by Joseph Muscat. Muscat was intoning these inanities while he seemingly became investigator of his criminal friends, chief police officer and chief spokesman.

This is the normality this Labour lot love. The normality where all is upside down.

The former police commissioner, now under investigation, has actually admitted in an interview that people of all hue and kind had access to his house. “Because everyone knows where I live,” he announced to the world.

That the man who was the police commissioner till a few months ago refers to two people of ill repute by their first name with no apparent compunction is also quite normal. These are fine details which many times end up nailing the guilty, the corrupters, the abetters of miscarriages of justice.

That these things are, or were, normal, and that nobody calls for a total overhaul of the political, administrative and judicial sectors, is appalling. That Robert Abela and Co still think they should not call for a truly independent enquiry into all these cases of obvious corruption and thwarting of justice is frightening.

It would be frightening if the crime involved was just about money, money laundering, thievery or even huge corruption. But when it involves the assassination of a woman, a journalist, a truth-seeker, a woman who revealed the misdeeds of the governing clique, then it goes way beyond frightening.

All is normal according to Labour spokespeople. Normal that all is corrupt and corruptible and that no one truly tries to find the root cause?

Our country deserves better. Much, much better than accepting as normal all that is despicable.