The end of a turbulent year
The year we are seeing off could have been better, far better.
We began the year as President of the European Council, a role that Malta fulfilled to a quite satisfactory level.
But the glitter soon paled as a tsunami of allegations of corruption submerged the Muscat government, so much so that the government hastened to call an early election, four years into its term. The Muscat government was returned with an increased majority.
But then, on 16th October, a powerful bomb killed the most known of Maltese journalists, Daphne Caruana Galizia. This event, still mostly unsolved, dominated the whole year and will most probably continue to dominate in the time to come.
It is now clear that the journalist was killed for what she has been writing and the gist of her writings was a wall-to-wall condemnation of a corruption that she described as endemic, right to the very last words she wrote before her assassination.
After that murder we had European Parliament committees visiting and sitting in judgment, debates in the EP and commemorative events all over Europe. Malta’s name was dragged through the mud and Malta was called all sorts of derogatory names.
The government doggedly continues to steer ahead regardlessly but, such as the event which is taking place as we write, the official financial closing of Malta’s gas and power project, it is all like a play of shadows.
The political parties still go at each other in Parliament and in their public speeches but their rhetoric is becoming irrelevant. The people accused by the journalist of involvement in corruption are all still there at their posts. The Leader of the Opposition, also accused, is still there.
The overall picture is of a country in a state of malaise which does not seem able to emerge from the morass. Hence the air of the last dance on the Titanic, the frenzied dancing in European ballrooms in 1938.
The much-vaunted growth is only partially true – it is based on a spurt of growth of online gaming, more than on financial services. There is a large amount of construction going on everywhere but one is still not sure if this is a bubble building up.
Other areas are remarkably doing well – such as tourism, building on the availability of so many low cost carriers.
When one tries to look ahead at the new year one glimmer of light comes from the Valletta as the Capital City of Culture for the entire year. May the celebrations show a far brighter picture of our country than the dying year has shown.
But beyond the celebrations, the real question for the new year is whether the people and its leaders can rise to the occasion and to the historic demands laid at its door. It is this that we augur for one and all in 2018.