The scandal relating to the concrete supply at Mater Dei Hospital is turning out to be a fitting metaphor to describe the fate of Maltese politics.
In the first instance we are gradually exposing an extremely deficient system that existed back in the mid-nineties that somehow or another allowed for the provision of sub-standard building materials for a hospital. Do not for one moment allow yourself to forget that it is a hospital that we are talking about. Along with schools, hospitals are probably one of the more socially sensitive infrastructures whose standard and quality mirror the heart of a nation -this is not to say that using deficient building material in order to construct any other type of building would have been a mitigation of any kind.
The formula for this horrible state of affairs is the tried and tested combination of commercial interests that work their way (either through influence or through direct involvement) into the corridors of power. The businessman and the politician will then work together to earn a quick buck on the backs of an electorate blinded by the passion for partisan flag-waving and alternation. The metaphor becomes ever more apt when one of the protagonists (shall we say suspects) turns out to be a career politician who managed to remain a sacred cow for one or other of the parties at different times in his career. No amount of irony was spared when his decade-spanning involvement in local (and now European and World) politics mean that somehow or other he was involved with the health structures of the nation under both parties in government.
But this is not about John Dalli. This is about the politics and political system of our nation. For I say that the metaphor remains apt to this day. Whether the guardians of the nation in the mid-nineties are to be found accountable for any corrupt sales of deficient construction material when building a new national hospital remains to be seen – what is sure is that someone has to pay. It will be another notch for the pro memoria of the twisted insanity of the post-Mintoffian generation of politicians.
What we have today is another government that is intent on hiding the truth or using parts of it to its gain. As of this month Muscat’s government is strongly testing the resilience of democratic sustainability and sovereignty. While the masks had fallen a long time ago, a long line of inexplicable decisions have provided clear hints that the Taghna Lkoll ideal has long been dead and buried and that Muscat has lost the plot.
It is hard to identify where it all began. Was it the full-frontal assault on the environment that did the trick? Was it the blatant lies relating to all that is Zonqor? Was it the slip relating to the Qala Yacht Marina? Muscat had tested the waters with the Hunting Referendum and wrongly gauged the slight victory obtained by those intent on preserving the status quo of wrongly appliying a European directive. Even today his appointees in the Ornis Committee defy all odds with relation to trapping. yet, Muscat’s defiant attitude on environmental issues is not a deal breaker on democratic standards. It is after all the prerogative of his party in government to espouse a suicidal destructive environmental policy.
No, the non-democratic chasm of Muscat lies away from these “minor” spites to our environmental heritage. It lies dotted within political appointments and appointees that are starting to betray their ineptness but still remain defended by the Prime Minister himself. It lies within a Cabinet Code of Ethics that has just been announced and that exposes Muscat’s money-hungry coterie for all its hypocrisy. It lies within the recent decisions relating to government property used to line the pockets of friends of friends (oh they are back but louder and clearer) from the Premier Cafe farce to the latest Gaffarena pot of gold.
It lies with the appointment of judges and magistrates in full defiance of the reforms that were being proposed by his very government. It lies with a “What’s all the fuss?” attitude combined with the “Tu Quoque” retorts that have long been dried of all significance and only serve to reinforce the strong perception of arrogance. It lies with the regular rubbing up to despots and tinpot country leaders and running around with a begging bowl while seemingly ignorant of the atrocities and democratic deficits that exist within the nations of these much adulated partners.
It lies with the belief that the national heritage and national identity is there solely for Labour’s politicians to plunder and sell to the highest bidder. With the passport scheme Muscat began to sell our mind and identity, with the lands that he has taken to expropriating, selling under cost, or plundering from their natural value he is selling our body and heritage, as for our soul, it has long been sold to the first devil to turn up at our doorstep promising Muscat a bit of money, an investment for his developer friends and a photo opportunity in which to prance around like some latter-day Mussolini on speed.
It’s a disgusting state of affairs in which nothing is sacred – not even the institutions that should stand as a guarantee. Under a nationalist government the faulty concrete foundations were laid at Mater Dei Hospital. At the same time the rotten core of all that is wrong in our political system had begun to take root. Today we find ourselves the inheritors of a hospital that is unsafe and of a government at the helm of a political system that is ready to implode any minute.
Joseph Muscat’s Labour has its hands deeply tied and entwined with the same kind of businessmen as existed in the mid-nineties and set the path for the Mater Dei disaster. It is beyond redemption. Hope, if any, lies first of all in Simon Busuttil and his managing the re-foundation of the nationalist party before going on to re-found the Maltese State. It must be patently obvious by now that the nationalist party needs a reconstruction from the roots and not simply a renewal. A new style of politics, a new style of engagement and a new style of leadership.
Speaking at Zonqor Busuttil did say that the biggest task for his party is not to be different from Muscat but also to be different from his own party in the past.
Those words should be printed out on a concrete slab at the entrance of PN HQ. Preferably on good, sound concrete… sound enough to build the basis for a brighter future ahead.
