The opening of parliament: another day of fakery and hypocrisy

It’s the state opening of parliament today, and because we don’t have a queen to turn up in full regalia or an outfit that mimics the European Union flag, we shall have Marie Louise Coleiro Preca, whose speech is written by the government – as is always the case with the president’s speech at the state opening of parliament – and who will doubtless whine on about being nice to one another, in the grand tradition of panto dames.

The day’s events begin with high mass, led by the Archbishop of Malta, who has been the target of unrelenting abuse by the Labour Party, through its propaganda agents Glenn Bedingfield and others less well known, and the party’s army of trolls operating through PL Central Command. Bedingfield, who is vile about the Archbishop, will nonetheless be in the congregation, because these hypocrites have no mettle.

The Prime Minister, whose aim appears to be a thousand-year reich masquerading as a democracy, will act magnanimous with the vanquished, while all the while plotting secretly how to do them in further and wrest even more control at the expense of the public and our rights.

The congregation at high mass will include crooks like Konrad Mizzi who, because of institutional failure, has been protected from due process as justice has been obstructed every step of the way. Even as he sits and stands at the Archbishop’s direction while God is praised and mass is said, he will be plotting how best to populate a few offshore companies with assets, to quote his infamous phrase, on the sale of Air Malta.

And meanwhile, nobody in the press seems to have noticed his close links to, and the commonality of shareholders in, the supposed hospital to be built at Smart City and the giant block of flats set to go up at Smart City too. They have made Smart City their own toy to play with.

The congregation will also include members of parliament who, in the last four years, have left their wives (and children) for other women, or who have been thrown out by their wives for running around with other women. It will include brothel-creepers like the Minister for the Economy and sleazes like the Minister for Justice. It will include the shadow minister for justice who, in the time-honoured fashion, left his wife for an actress once people had safely gone to the polls and voted.

It will also include at least one member of parliament who went regularly to massage parlours and demanded a happy ending, issuing threats when it was refused.

Given that so few members of parliament are prepared to let God (or common decency) be their guide, I think Malta should dispense with the fakery and hypocrisy of opening parliament with mass said by the Archbishop. That ship has sailed, those days are gone. Place a golden calf in parliament and have done with it. The only thing those people worship is the hard cash their forebears were starved of for centuries. The Mafia is coming home.

They seem to have forgotten that the Archbishop represents God, not Mammon.