This article is not fresh. It scarcely says anything that has not already been said. The predicament of our nation is such that the Cassandra-like warnings that opinion columnists emanate from their worried lines have become cyclically repetitive. I’ve already written an iteration of this article somewhere before.
The news of Pelin Kaya’s horrendous death at the hands of the worst specimen society can produce has been yet another reminder of the devaluation of human life in Malta. Human Capital has been gambled with and we have become a society that is prepared to sacrifice the quality of life and the safety that should come with it upon the altar of progress.
“Abbiamo alzato la posta, ci siamo giocati tutto, anche il futuro dei nostri figli. E adesso finalmente ci godiamo quello che ci spetta.” (We have raised the stakes, we have gambled everything, even the future of our children. Now we finally reap what we deserve).
That’s a quote taken from Paolo Virzi’s ‘The Human Capital’ – a film worth watching. It encapsulates this idea of a society that prioritises progress above the future of its sons and daughters.
PM Abela said in an interview that he does not consider the streets of our capital safe enough for his daughter to walk freely. That comment came in the wake of Malta’s equivalent of a baby gang attack in the capital.
I also watched an interview with Aaron Farrugia, the man of many ministries, and was appalled by his refusal to come to terms with his incompetence. It’s not that the man is unrepentant of his ‘let them eat cake’ style jibes (an attitude that spans the Labour Cabinet in many ways) but that he is acutely unaware of where his priorities should lie.
Farrugia and Abela are products of Muscat’s progressive Labour. That is the Labour that created the fertile ground for criminal impunity and ruthless progress. That is the Labour that gambled our future on the creation of a fantastical “middle-class”.
It has spawned a generation of self-entitled citizens ignorant of any sense of civic duty and solidarity.
The social fabric of the nation has been shaken irreparably. The gamble might have succeeded in creating a sense of materialistic satisfaction, but the end result is a horrible devaluation of the human capital. We do not care about future generations. We do not even care about the current ones. It is a savage world of survival of the connected.
Ironically, we illude ourselves in debating the right to life and the right to choose. In truth, we have long resigned ourselves to the idea that one can only survive with our rights and expectations being eroded gently every day. Quality of life. What quality? What life?
Aaron Farrugia was asked whether he would consider introducing a tax on car use. His reply? “A progressive Labour government would not consider that.” He would not consider parking meters either because, “I cannot charge people for using their cars when they have no alternative.”
It’s right there. In his answers. The calculations have been made and we prefer to invest in the future of cars on this ever so claustrophobic island than to try, just for one second, to invest in human capital.
“You gambled on the ruin of this country. And you have won.” (Human Capital, Paolo Virzi).
I had visited Singapore in the early nineties and at the time, because of their traffic congestion problems, cars with odd and even number plates, were allowed to be driven on alternate days. Il-bravu Aaron has no clue of responsibility in tackling the traffic problem, in case the Gahans turn on him.
The rise in populism has eroded our way of living.
This article is straight to the point and sadly, as mentioned already, it isn’t news but another reflection on the bad situations that have become a triviality for many.
When there was the debate on legalising canabis for private use in small quantities, the PLers were mostly all for it. Neglecting or downplaying the fact that for the many of the drug addicts that later took on hard drugs, a joint was always the first step to it.
It takes a great deal of self-responsibility when smoking a joint and not move on to other harder drugs. This man who killed Pelin Kaya, is an example of excessive drug abuse and nobody who would like to just downplay the use of drugs would ever convince me that this man was not starting with canabis in his early years.
The so called legalisation of cannabis, and I mean that cannabis should only be prescribed by medics and only more medical treatment and not for ‘leisure purposes’, as introduced by the PL govt last year, was a folly. It goes, as the title of this article points out, quite into the same direction. That means, by various examples, that a human life is worth next to nothing and if someone likes to ruin his life by drug abuse, then so be it, nobody cares. When someone like this chap, and in my opinion he run that woman over with his car not quite by accident but as it looks deliberately, takes the life of another human being passing by, then drastic action is needed.
The PL, if it really ever had a core of humanity in itself and not just using this for mere partisan propaganda, has lost its soul because of the lack of humanity. Wherever I look, plenty of articles in the media prove that, there is no humanity inside the PL. They don’t care about people who fell victim of the building industry, they don’t care about workers falling off the building sites, they don’t care about gangs harassing the neighbourhood, pedestrians in the capital, they don’t care about anybody unless the person is as stupid as the others are and follows the PL no matter what, no matter what the price of a human life.
The PL is in my view, after years of following the Maltese media, that party in Malta that rightly deserves to be called the party of nihilism. Nihilism of the worst sort and only caring for their own chums and cronies. It is not just based on media articles, not less of these PLers have confirmed and thus proved this despicable attitude themselves in their very own comments elsewhere.
Joseph Muscat as their still mostly admired leader, even after resigning from office, has just transformed what Dom Mintoff started and that means that there is no difference between the old MLP and the present PL, there was always a lack of humanity and what they understood and still understand by ‘humanity’ is pure cronyism. History is full of such examples and it is therefore no wonder that there is a growing amount of people in Malta who can’t take it anymore to live under such a regime. But I also have to say that those who, for what reasoning they might had, refused to vote in the last GE, and thus also indirectly provided for the second landslide win of the PL in a row, have contributed to let the PLers feel encouraged that the way they rule this country has the consent of the majority.
It really doesn’t matter anymore what this or that top rank PLer says or refuses to say. It has become too obvious that they don’t give a damn about the life of the people in Malta because, as stated in this article, the understanding and implementation of the meaning of ‘progress’ in what the PL thinks to be right, is paramount and above everything.
In the UK, the phrase ‘never trust a Tory’ has its deep meaning and there are plenty of examples that justify that phrase. In Malta, I would paraphrase that with ‘never trust a PLer anymore’ and the reasons for that are more than obvious, weighing heavly on everybody who really cares about Malta, whether being a Maltese citizen or not.
A country in moral decay, perfectly defined as “It is a savage world of survival of the connected”.
Aaron Farrugia mistakes each opportunity to interview him for some sort of validation of his success.
“There is no magic wand”, he told us, half-pretending to bestow on us some sort of wise incantation.
He does not get to sit in the minister’s chair to tell us “There is no magic wand”.
He sits in that chair precisely because he should be the one to find the magic wand and fix the problem.
The reality is that he lacks a backbone and is afraid to come up with a strategy to move people away from cars and onto public transportation. Buses would work better if they are not stuck in traffic.
The man is inept, barely able to string a coherent sentence, and totally out of touch with the reality of his surroundings.
The Maltese will never renounce to the use of private cars since car is a commodity after all and essential to go from one point to another in private and without the need to mingle with different spheres of society. Today many women have a job and opt to own a car which is also affordable due to the vast selection of models in the market mostly of which second hand. So when one takes into account the ongoing growing population of ours due to the importation of thousands of foreigners per year, who collectively continue to increase the demand for commodities and putting pressures on our infrastructure, hence it is easy to realise that the future of this country is literally bleak.
How do other cities survive without cars? After all, Malta is the size of a city state, we have to get used to the idea that we are no more special than any other people, that if others have found a way to cope with fewer cars, so can we, and so we must!
In 2012 someone tried to get the bull by the horns and introduce a modern public transport system which was NOT perfect but it was reliable and very cheap €1.50 per day. Arriva was a dead duck because of the machinations of the Labour Party in opposition. It didn’t stand a chance. How could it be when even on the very first day 150 bus drivers conspired not to turn up for work? Arriva established the basis of a modern system. To this day all the bus stops and termini are still Arriva. The Arriva infrastructure and colours are still very visible. Some of the present buses are different and the bendy buses have gone. Taking everything into consideration Busses de Leon is getting €283 million, whereas Arriva received €6 million to set up the system, the busses and the routes, but are the buses good now? Not by a long shot.
We need technocrats to run this country not circus clowns!