Friday 29 March 2024

We don’t need no selective ethics

I just love the way our political parties, egged on by their grassroots supporters, are so very ethical in Opposition but seem to suffer from ethical amnesia once they are voted into power.

Perhaps the ethics courses which students can choose these days instead of taking religion, should be made mandatory for anyone embarking on a political career. It would certainly save us having to give them a lot of painstaking, tedious explanations of what is right and what is wrong, and what is acceptable and non-acceptable behaviour the minute one enters public life.

What is taking place right now, as gravely serious as it is, goes far beyond Minister Konrad Mizzi, Chief of Staff Keith Schembri and the Prime Minister himself. It also goes far beyond Simon Busuttil, his rallying cry for a “national protest against corruption” and the derision with which this call was met, since the PN is hardly in a position to pontificate on this issue.

As Jurgen Balzan aptly pointed out in his article, this is about us.  What do we really want Malta to be like? Are we content to let everything slide, just as long as we can turn it into yet another boring partisan slanging match where everyone dredges up examples of how “your” side was equally (or more) corrupt than “ours”?

Have we become so jaded that we are just going to shrug as the PN uses and grasps this opportunity to make inroads into the disheartened and quickly disintegrating support base of the Labour party?  Does it always have to be about that?  Min mhux magħna kontra tagħna, jekk mhux aħmar mela blu.  (either with us or against us, if you don’t support the reds, then you are with the blues).  

I’ve seen people chortling with glee about the right mess the Labour administration has got itself into, but what is there to laugh about, really? The fact that one successive government after another first fights tooth and nail to get into the seat of power, only for us the voters to always end up getting the short end of the stick?

Raphael Vassallo today wrote that perhaps what is needed is something similar to the Inspectors General in the US, who have the power to demand any documents from those in public office in order to monitor and track abuse, and I agree. Definitely this country needs more checks and balances, as well as a thorough vetting and screening process of anyone who puts himself forward for public office or is appointed to a public post….rather than things being allowed to spiral out of control until it is too late.  Blatant conflicts of interest should be declared and nipped in the bud.

This is what we should be looking at, and not whether political points can be scored so that like jeering rival supporters at a Juve vs Inter match, we can use every new development in our screwed up political system to call each other names.

 

 

 

 

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