Independence – of failures and charades

Mario de Marco recently proclaimed that independence has not failed us in unity, liberty, social justice and human rights and would not fail us in the future. Mario is an old friend of mine and I have no reason to doubt his integrity. He means well and he says what he means.
His is a message not so much to the reader of the newspaper he was using as a medium. The subtlety of Mario’s words (concluding words, at that) must have been like pangs in the fatty tissue of the hijackers of the Nationalist Party and the Malta Labour Party. The downbeat statement concluding the Parliamentary Secretary’s contribution speaks volumes. Why? Because, in reality, independence has failed us, unfortunately.
The Maltese population is a breed that suffers in silence. True, it likes celebrating. It enjoys chattering. It lives in hope. But it sobs in solitude and in private. And while it weeps and sleeps in a hush, the forces of materialism scheme away in what matters for them and for them only – power, wealth, fancy toys which they do not even know how to use or have no time to enjoy. God bless us all for being entrepreneurial. How else would we achieve added value, growth, advancement and all that?
But the buck does not stop there, regrettably. Lip service has become the order of the day and the humans on these islands seem to have become immune to this intelligence-insulting form of cheekiness, effrontery and impudence. The charade is so visible, so obvious, so real. Social justice? Human rights?
Dr de Marco, Mario more affectionately, means well and I am repeating this statement as I do believe the man. I also believe that people of his ilk are trying their hardest to weed out the rot at the PN’s top echelons (like Joseph Muscat is doing at the MLP’s, I suppose). I have endeavoured and shall continue to strive to, at least, kick-start the process leading to the rats’ ousting to oblivion and irrelevance. Independence is for the mature, the intrepid and the righteous citizenry and not for the alienated and the indolent. Let me rephrase that. Independence is the prize we Maltese worked so hard for. It suited us, then. It was an achievement that we wholly deserved. It was the instrument which Malta and Gozo needed so as to spear ahead, and thank God, we did.
However, when the whiff of complacency turned into a stench of a national pastime and lip service became music to the ‘deaf’ ears, independence proved to be the sleeping cat which we could ill afford to depend on. There is no such thing as “independence” or, to be more precise “total independence”. No man is an island. The nation wanted independence from the British. But the citizenry was, is and shall always remain dependent on the administration that it elects to govern – an administration, not a sleeping cat. And now, now that the mice have grown into rats, now what? Now, freedom (liberty) comes once every five years. As for unity… lip service too?
Is it failing us, Dr de Marco?

Jo Said
Selmun

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