Top comment: “Joseph Muscat and his cronies are not the root cause of our problems. They are merely the symptoms. Muscat can do this because we all let him get to where he is, in the state that he is – unfit to govern.”
Propelled to power on the force of Chinese money and Maltese stupidity and cupidity.
A comment posted by Rachel yesterday:
The situation is tragic indeed and I don’t blame people for being so hurt by what is happening with the sales of passports issue.
However, embarrassing as this may be, this is not the bigger issue. This passport scam is merely a symptom of the bigger problem – and the problem is not Joseph Muscat but the system that put him into power and which added legitimacy to all his cocky plans and party.
After the last election my gut feeling was that democracy doesn’t work – at least, not in Malta. I didn’t feel that way because my preferred party lost the election, but because I realized that Cikku il-Poplu has as much of a vote as I have, and as much of a vote as those few decent intelligent and rational beings around us have.
I am saying this quite blatantly not because I am an intellectual snob, but quite the contrary. I am saying this simply to illustrate that people have different value systems and the majority of Maltese give value and priority to rather more superficial values which increase their chances of quick financial gain, personal self-interest, and instant gratification.
These values can only lead most people on this island to view and comprehend the short-term picture with no consequence for the implications of their actions. And this is why I feel that democracy (with all its beautiful ideals) cannot work in a small and inherently corrupt country like ours.
Joseph Muscat and his cronies are not the root cause of our problems. They are merely the symptoms. Yes, Joseph Muscat may well be a sad little sod, only child of a fireworks maker who was bullied at school and who now wants to get his revenge on his tiny little world in his little simple mind. But he can do this because we all let him get to where he is, in the state that he is – unfit to govern.
Quite frankly, while he is to be held responsible for everything due to the position he holds, his whole support structure is as screwed as it comes. And it is irrelevant whether he is the puppet or the puppeteer.
This is more than just a case of us getting what we deserve. We are perfectly capable of embarrassing ourselves on our own (go to any European airport and you’ll hear the Maltese goat from a million miles away loaded with bags of shopping like we’re still living in the Catania market days).
The system got us into this mess and unless we find a way to educate our citizens as to the true power of democracy and the responsibility of being a good citizen of a country (sweet irony indeed) we will continue to rot in our own festering gut.
Daphne, I have no doubt that you would have had a more eloquent way of saying all this, and I have no problem with you publishing or not publishing this view on your blog. But much as I can understand people’s need to scream blue murder with this terrible situation, I can’t help but feel empty inside.
We knew this situation was going to be bad, but I just never thought it would be so bad so soon. We are all collectively responsible for what happened. The question is what, at this point can we or can’t we do?
Thanks as always for your work,
Rachel
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Cannot agree more. How many voted out of spite (hudu go fikom), because of personal “issues” (ma hadtx dak il-promotion), personal promises from a candidate or two (cempilli u nsiblek xoghol mal-Lidl), short-termism (electricity prices when the world went through a recession) or some other improper reason (eg habit)? Far too many for comfort.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill
Couldn’t agree more!
I myself went through a phase of disillusionment with democracy a while ago, but then I realized that with all its flaws, democracy is still the best and safest system we have.
The failure in Malta does not lie with democracy in itself. The problem here is lack of education which creates a tendency towards personality cults and fanaticism.
It is a well known fact that the bedrock of democracy is an educated populace. Only a person who has at least a minimum standard of education and reasoning faculties can analyse complex political and economic issues and see through propaganda. The PN recognized this and did everything in its power to provide quality education to everybody who wanted it.
But here lies the problem; not everybody wants it. There are complex social forces at work here . The colonial mentality of a people that for thousands of years eked a meagre living on a barren rock through subsistence farming and begging, is not easy to change.
Whole swathes of the population are so used to being on the bottom rung of the ladder that in their mind they cannot fathom ever being able to make a better life for themselves. I live in the South and I know what I’m talking about because I come across this abominable mentality every single day. Going to Bormla is like stepping through a time machine into the Malta of a hundred years ago.
This is the real place where time stood still, not Gozo. Here you hear parents complaining about having to take their children to school instead of putting them to work, because after all they never had any use for school so why should their children? And mind you, there are those who do put their children to work – especially if they are girls.
I am describing perhaps the worst den of ignorance in the country, but there are echoes of this kind of forma mentis all over the country. The survivalist mentality, which makes people content themselves with table-scraps, has served well a population constantly on the edge of extinction for thousands of years. It now holds them back in the cave because over so many generations of just surviving, the light of day has become unfamiliar and frightening.
All this is fertile soil for the idea of a “salvatur” to take hold. The superman who will take over their miserable lives allowing them to do away with the hardest chore of all, that of having to think for themselves; the hero who will give them a job, no matter how unproductive, and a wage coming in every week that they don’t have to think much about. And over and above that this superman will tell them that it is their right to be given a job, no matter how unqualified and useless they are or how badly they do that job, if at all.
No wonder there are families who still light candles at Mintoff’s shrine.
This is what democracy has to contend with in this country – but far from making me despair, though, the fact that we have had successes after all, in spite of all this damage, tells me that democracy can be made to work even against all odds. It’s a constant uphill struggle, but with people of real substance leading it CAN be done.
We are currently going through a bad time for democracy, and I’d say the worst is yet to come, but I am confident that the forces for democracy will rise again from the ashes of the PN stronger than before.
I am confident because I see so many valid talented young people making their way through the ranks of the party and so many more whom I speak to in all walks of life who do understand the importance of democracy and who are genuinely appalled at what is going on.
Bear in mind that the only people protesting outside parliament when the vote was taken to sell Maltese citizenship were young people from the Nationalist Party, and it was their photograph, not the prime minister’s, which made the headline news the world over.
I also see the shambles that Labour has become in only a few months, despite the hefty budget that seems to be the only thing propping it up.
So things are looking down right now, and unfortunately it will take years to fix the damage, but let us not despair. Democracy did work in the past and it will work again.
Democracy can at times be flawed in concept as much as socialism is. Perhaps a short interview or better still an IQ test taken at the voting booth would weed out the “unworthy” but as much as I fantasize about it, it’s superfluous to point it out as wishful thinking, if anything because such a selection process would be considered dictatorial (I for one would not mind it, in this case at least, but where would one draw the line from there onwards?).
Not that the current state of affairs augurs any better, mind you.
Rachel, you are very right. However what annoys me the most is not the need to educate Cikku l-Poplu. It’s the need to do something about insatiably greedy and unprincipled people who have had all the advantages and privileges but whose behaviour is worse than that of those who had none – like the Gasans, Fenechs, Apap Bolognas. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how educated you are or like to think you are – people can be so damn greedy and malicious that nothing else counts.
Whenever someone comes complaining to me about the current situation, the first thing I ask is “did you vote Labour to try them out msieken”.
Rachel well said, the worst is seeing evil cunning individuals (there are a few within PL) use Cikku il poplu to get where they are.