MPs, magistrates, and common mortals: not all are equal

The political future of Labour MP Rosianne Cutajar does not look promising after George Hyzler’s conclusions.

But the common factor underscoring the arguments of those hell-bent at seeing one side of the political spectrum wiped out, is that anyone who orbited around Tumas magnate Yorgen Fenech is by association culpable of a heinous crime if not responsible for murder, money laundering and corruption.

Alas, it is not as simple as some zealots make that out to be. If that was the case, two senior Nationalist MPs who are lawyers, would be taken out, tried by this kangaroo court and executed.

It sickens me to death to continue reminding everyone that the whole business class, legal profession, audit companies, politicians and celebrities who circled round the Tumas family were also ordinary folk who hailed from all walks of life. Some were more obsequious than others of course, but if that was a crime, then half of the political class will have to go.

The absolute majority who continued to meet Yorgen Fenech before his arrest had no knowledge of whether the allegations about Fenech were indeed true.

And that is why most people continued to act as they had acted, because they could never imagine that someone so privileged and rich could have risked everything to play a part in this assassination.

But even so, this toxic environment of political and business hobnobbing has tired out the general public and needs closure. My fear is that this closure will not be realised with a court judgement or the findings of the three judges in the public inquiry. It needs a political solution, which draws the curtains once and for all on the Muscat era. In spite of his economic success story, the Muscat administration carries with it the shadow of Panama and the killing of Daphne. It was an era of great deceit.

This cannot be achieved by simply changing leadership half-way through a five-year term. A new government must bring legitimacy and clarity, and do away – to a certain extent – to the past.

Robert Abela is the best placed to race in the polls and win. Even though his party has committed grave mistakes, the opposition Nationalist Party remains limp and uninspiring.

And ultimately, irrespectively of the fantasies of some, this is the real nature of democracy in Malta. Even with a greylisting by the FATF, it is inconceivable that this state of affairs could necessitate an upending of the normal course of a democracy, to short-circuit the way of government with some sort of new, national coalition of sorts. The proposal of some interim administration, as championed by Repubblika (I mean, is that the kind of proposal you do in a three-man press conference on the kerb outside Castille... is that how short-circuiting a democratically-elected government is done these days?), will not happen because the Maltese are not cretins. It would be shocking that such a proposal could even be made, just as it were the Taliban or some other theocratic pretender with say, Manuel Delia as its spiritual guide taking shots at anyone with a different political DNA.

It just makes one wonder who this republic’s malaise is not limited to the doings of one small group, but a widespread characteristic of inward-looking tribalism.

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This week Magistrate Joe Mifsud meted out a decision, a sort of slap on the wrist for two architects, who had supervised the excavations that led to the untimely death of a much-loved woman – Miriam Pace.

Mifsud’s decision to force community service on two architects, the men who were responsible for the way works panned out on site, rather than imprisonment, showed the utter servility of some of our judiciary who treat professionals different to other workers or migrants, with no respectable profession to speak of.

I have long believed there is a pecking order in the grand design of guilt. The buck as we all know, stops with the captain, the admiral, the editor of a newspaper, the minister, the CEO and so on and so forth.

So what happened with the two architects? Were they not high up in the animal kingdom? Were they not the last people to decide or not decide whether certain technical issues were an issue?

Why someone like Joe Mifsud with all his Labour Party roots fails to see that the buck stops with the men or women who pull the strings, escapes me. The ugly truth is that some magistrates are simply not fit for purpose. Many are, but some are not. And Joe Mifsud, is one of them.

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Last week, I wrote an article about the pressure of exams on children and teenagers.  I alluded to suicidal thoughts. I think I should be more direct: I am talking of suicides which have rocked families and forever deprived them of their serenity.

There have been several cases and attempts by young people, due to the stress they have experienced, exacerbated by the influence of the invasive social media monster and peer pressure.

I received many positive comments on that article. Many readers told me that they as parents were worried with the work-load, the expectations to do well, the enforced competition with other, and the negative impact on schooling as a result of COVID-19. Others had scathing remarks for the MATSEC syllabi.

And I also said that education minister Justyne Caruana would probably not react when she reads this article.

Which is why we need to rock the boat, until someone listens and acts!