‘Make it look like an accident...’

Regular readers of this column will probably know that I have very little patience for ‘conspiracy theories’, at the end of the day. (In fact, I’ve received my own fair share of hate-mail, for having attempted to debunk so many of them over the years...)

Nonetheless, this week I made an important discovery concerning that particular phenomenon. Namely, that ‘conspiracy theories’ – even of the most outlandish variety imaginable – tend to automatically become far more ‘convincing’, to your own ears... when you actually come up with them yourself!

Yes, indeed, folks. After all these years of (unsuccessfully) arguing the case for ‘rationality’ over ‘mindless sensationalism’, I too have finally succumbed to the inevitable, and decided that... what the heck?  ‘If you can’t beat them, join them!’

Besides: there are moments in life – and this week happened to be one of them – when you look at everything around you, and find yourself thinking: “But hang on a sec: there IS no actual rational explanation to account for all this absurdity, is there? There IS no way to link up all these apparent ‘coincidences’- or ‘join all these dots’, if you prefer - that would conceivably make sense, from any ordinary, sane, non-conspiratorial perspective...”

So, who knows? Maybe those conspiracy theorists have a point, after all, to constantly look for ‘irrational’ explanations instead; and to keep coming up with more imaginative – bizarre, even – ways, to somehow ‘make sense of the nonsensical’.

In any case: to cut a long story short, this week I decided to have a crack at it myself. And what do you know? In absolutely no time at all, I found myself accidentally unearthing a secret plan – already at an advanced stage, by the way; and involving, it seems, the Government of Malta; Infrastructure Malta; the Malta Transport Authority; and even the ‘Malta Roads Safety Commission’ (yes, folks: we actually have one) – to...

... well, ‘kill us all’, I suppose. Or to be more accurate: to slowly ‘thin out our population’, so that our sheer numbers no longer pose such a ‘strain on the country’s resources’, and all that...

Oh, and in case you were wondering: like all self-respecting conspiracy theories, mine, too, is ultimately rooted in a number of undeniable ‘facts’. So, without further ado: let’s go over a few of them, shall we?

Fact #1: We now have solid, unambiguous evidence, that the Government of Malta – specifically, in the form of its finance minister, Clyde Caruana – has for some time now been regretting its policy of ‘growing the economy, by expanding the population’.

In 2022, Caruana himself even told us that: “I was a cheer leader of government policy that favoured a growth in human resources to enable this country to expand its productivity…”.

He later admitted that “the same recipe adopted over the past 10 years is unsuitable for the type of economic development the country should aim for in the next decade.”

In other words: having deliberately engineered a population explosion of around 200,000, in the space of 10 years, in order to ‘fuel economic growth’, the government has belatedly realised that Malta is now home to more people than its infrastructure (including, but not limited to, its traffic infrastructure) can actually sustain.

And let’s face it: there are only so many ways you can actually go about ‘solving’ a problem like that. You could, for instance, simply ‘change the country’s immigration policy’ (preferably, into something which takes Malta’s infrastructural capabilities into account BEFORE opening the floodgates to immigration, instead of afterwards).

Alternatively, you could expand Malta’s infrastructure, so that it CAN actually accommodate all those people. A quick note: I need hardly add that this is by far the most expensive option on the table; and in any case, it’s probably far too late for any of that now, anyway.

Or else, you could simply do it the good old-fashioned way and, well, just ‘bump off’ a few random people, from time to time. You know, like game-keepers occasionally do with herds of wild animals: when they multiply so much, that their numbers need to be controlled for the sake of ‘preserving the ecosystem’.

Which naturally brings me to:

Fact #2: This week, the National Office of Statistics published its annual traffic report, and... oh look, what a coincidence! It turns out that “the number of road traffic accidents in the first quarter of 2023 reached 3,822, registering an increase of 6.3% over the previous year”; and that “road traffic casualties increased by 13.3% to 367 in 2023.”

Now: to be fair, the same NSO report also indicates that the number of traffic fatalities has actually DECREASED – if ever so slightly – since last year. But that detail has to weighed against a couple of other factors... including that:

a) 2022 happened to be the worst year ever on record, for traffic fatalities in this country – with a staggering 26 deaths recorded in just 12 months (that’s more than one ‘every two weeks’) - so any comparison with 2023 has to be adjusted accordingly; and;

b) Even the best-lain, most masterfully-executed of ‘secret plans’ have been known to misfire, occasionally (and let’s face it: some of the survivors of those 3,822 accidents are actually lucky to still be alive. You could, in fact, almost regard them as ‘the ones who got away...’)

All the same, however: I am the first to admit that these statistics, in and of themselves, do not really ‘prove’ the the veracity of my own conspiracy theory. After all, the mere fact that ‘so many more people are dying in traffic accidents, on average, year after year’, does not itself mean that those people are actually the victims of a cunning, subtle (and above all, State-orchestrated) ‘Final Solution’, to Malta’s overpopulation woes...

Or at least: not until you put those figures into their proper context; and view them against the backdrop of all the government’s other ‘plans’ and ‘policies’, over the years, regarding the traffic situation in its totality.

In so doing, the first thing you will notice is:

Fact #3: Over the past 10 or so years, the government of Malta has invested literally billions of euros – including not just taxpayers’ money; but also, EU funding – into ‘improving the country’s traffic infrastructure’.

Last year, for instance, a PQ revealed that Infrastructure Malta, alone, had spent over €12 million on ‘consultancy fees’.  Beneficiaries included the traffic consultancy firm, Arup; the aforementioned ‘Malta Roads Safety Council’ (that’s right: the one that nobody’s ever even heard of); and we were also told that: “Lawyers Alex Scerri Herrera, now Parliamentary Secretary Andy Ellul, Aaron Mifsud Bonnici, now Justice Minister Jonathan Attard, Charlon Gouder, Joe Gerada and Maria Cardona (former wife of  Chris Cardona) each made thousands of euros from [Transport Malta] consultancies...”

And that, of course, is not to mention the (probably incalculable) amounts of money this government has also frittered, over the past decade, on gargantuan infrastructural projects such as the Marsa flyover, the Central Link, and the ‘road-widening exercises’ that have taken place. pretty much all over the entire country.

All of which were justified, by government, on the grounds that - to quote another Cabinet Minister this time (Aaron Farrugia, responsible for the Transport portfolio) - “our aim has been to make sure that our roads are [cough, splutter] SAFE; and to KEEP OUR CARS MOVING AT PACE...” [my emphasis, both times]

Once again, however: there are only so many ways those facts can actually be interpreted, at the end of the day. Either the government of Malta has literally wasted untold billions in tax-payers’ money, over the course of a decade, on various ‘consultancies’ and ‘projects’ that have been such spectacular, colossal FAILURES... that Malta’s roads are now infinitely more dangerous, than they ever have been in past.

In which case: the very least one would expect, is for all the entities/individuals involved, in this scandalous example of ‘maladministration’, to actually shoulder their collective responsibilities for the fiasco (either by resigning, or by being simply ‘booted out’).

Another interpretation, however, is that: far from being the ‘failures’ that they appear to be... all those ‘consultancies’ and ‘projects’ were actually a [pun intended] ‘smashing success’! Not only have they all played their own (minor) part, in enacting the government’s ‘cunning plan’ to slowly cut the Maltese population back down to size, as it were...

... but – in true conspiracy theory fashion – they even followed the instructions that ‘M’ always gave, in every single Bond movie ever made, right down to the very last letter!

“One last thing, 007. Make it look like an accident, this time...”