J.G. Vassallo
Whether one looks at the Maltese scenario from the battlements of Valletta or from Brussels, the picture is not pretty to behold.
The government is gasping for breath, and struggling to free itself from the grips of a structural deficit. The economy is sinking under a rising tide of national debt.
While politicians ride the merry-go-round of polarised antagonism, the environment has been going steadily to the dogs, air and water pollution threaten to run out of control. The state of many roads is deplorable, very often approximating Third World conditions and the quality of the public transport service is parlous.
The litany of inadequacies is longer, and a full perusal will pose challenging questions to any concerned citizen, whether one happens to be a starry-eyed youth, or a seasoned pensioner. What matters is whether or not these questions lead to the wall of clarity.
Man is soaring into the solar system. Man’s tracks have been planted on the moon more than 40 years ago. Everything struggles for change – except our outworn insular disposition.
Our outworn systems, spawned in the immense spider webs of the Middle Ages, and weaned on colonialism, are, however, inimical to change.
Is this, fundamentally, the reason why so many flowers have been wilting the Maltese garden? Why has the so-called ‘intellectual class’ been unwilling to ride the chariot of change, and allowed, in its lethargy, the dogs of hunger to prowl outside its villas? Or has there been a lack of uninterrupted leadership with true grit and broad vision to keep the emergent, independent Malta on the qui vive?
Ever since the 60s, Malta had to meet massive problems. It had to cobble together the paraphernalia of an independent state, switch from a fortress to a market economy, expedite the take-off of its industrialization process, build up its tourism sector practically from scratch, and struggle for survival in the Mediterranean powder-keg under the gathering clouds of a cold war, until it made it to the European Union.
In itself, this was a challenge that would have tested the resources of a major power. To cope with such a challenge in a democratic environment calls for statesmanship.
One could not have expected an emerging democracy to be united. It was frog marched for a time in conditions of state control. On the other hand, it is equally difficult for an emergent nation to make steady progress if consensus is lacking and, worse still, if the elected leadership lacks drive and initiative.
Malta has lacked a leadership with a unifying force.
In the old days, it was divide et impera. The days of empire have receded, but the seeds of division remain embedded in large tracts of Maltese political soil.
These poisonous seeds generated spite and outright hatred. In turn, they created an environment that favoured clientelism, corruption, and abuse of power, and intimidated public-spirited citizens from offering public service.
Thankfully, the winds of change have lately started to blow. The old wall of prejudice has started to crumble by slow degrees, and archaic structures are gradually beginning to break down.
Malta’s insularity has been overcome by the spread of education, mass travel and rapid technological advances in the field of communications. As a result, electoral maturity has been making inroads. More and more citizens are coming out into the open to pump bullets of clarity in the political sky. Voters with a mind of their own are making their presence felt, and they give every indication of being able to walk unaided to the polling booth.
It is this segment of the electorate that hungers and thirsts for a new generation of leaders, who are prepared to look at Malta’s problems and not at personalities; who have done their homework with a view to seeking solutions; who rely on professional expertise rather than their craving for visibility on the media.
The change Malta needs is one that would allow reason to get the upper hand. It is reason, the mainstay of justice and the spur to efficiency, that must prevail in tomorrow’s Malta. The long awaited Spring cannot be held up.
After the experience of the past three years, the electorate has somehow to liberate itself from a handful of Ministers whose muddle appears to be so clear and whose lucidity is so muddled up.

jgv@onvol.net

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