Roamer’s column

So; priests are human; inhuman, too, and it is the inhumanity of three, one of them now deceased, that held the island’s attention last week and will do so for some time to come. I wish, though, that some members of the Fourth Estate would be less prurient in their reportage. There is no need for this; paedophile activity is paedophile activity – the details of it need not, should not, be paraded for reasons that are nothing less than salacious journalism.

Looking back on this unholy saga, the foot-dragging that went on must be one of its salient features. Rather in the same way that we condemn, not enough, the inordinate length of time it takes to bring criminal or civil cases to court – well over a decade in some instances – so the dance of time it took to bring the two priests to justice is one which must be recognised as intolerable. It is so being recognised.

We know from the victims in this case what they feel about the experiences they were put through; one of them has expressed himself often enough. We also know the effects it had on them. Now that justice has been done on their behalf, one must hope that the ugly episode can be put behind them and they can now get on with their lives. The same cannot be said for those who were responsible for acts inimical to human dignity.

For both priests in this turgid affair were supposed to be what Pope Benedict XVI called, in one of his addresses in Brazil, “The first promoters of discipleship and mission... who have been called to be with Jesus and to be sent out to preach... I should like to offer them,” he added, “a word of paternal affection hoping that “the Lord will be their portion and cup. If the priest has God as the foundation and centre of his life, he will experience the joy and the fruitfulness of hisvocation (he) must be above all‘a man of God’.”

The guilty men in this ugly story remain men in need of redemption; it is they who have to face themselves, to see their ‘grievous fault’ and as best they can, repent. It may yet be one of the major ironies of the story, seeing that their lawyers have taken the case to appeal – most of us wondered why, even as we acknowledged their right to do so – it may yet be the final irony that their redemption rests in great part not only on the acknowledgement of their crime, but also on their forgiveness by their victims. Will this happen? We must hope so.

Armageddon? What Armageddon?

Barack Obama will long remember his 50th birthday – and not only because he had reached that psychologically unnerving age. It happened when doomsday threatened, which did not prevent fund-raising dinner binges at $71,000 a place.

No media in the world were as determined as Malta’s to ignore the horrendous implications of failed debt ceiling talks in the US; or, indeed, to take any substantial interest in the crisis itself. Nor has an adequate sense of relief been shown that a Bill was finally knocked together to prevent default, a Bill that Obama could sign; which he did and this despite a declaration he had made, earlier in the unseemly tussle which finally concluded with a deal between President and Congress, that absent an inclusion of tax increases he would not put hissignature to any documentCongress sent to the White House. He did.

The political fact of the matter in the US is, and it was one that President and Congress tried hard to ignore, that last year’s mid-term elections changed the political profile of that country. A new brand of politicians belonging to the Tea Party was sent up by the electorate to Washington in 2010 to sort out the way politics and America were being run.

During the battle of the bulging deficit Obama tried somewhat disdainfully and, as it turned out unsuccessfully, to write off these ‘freshmen’ as a tiresome block. His gaffe-prone vice-president was reported to have likened the Tea Party to “terrorists”, which just about sums up the paucity of Joe Biden’s mind.

Tiresome or no – let’s leave Biden out of this, things are bad enough – their determination not to see any cut-back in expenditure balanced by tax increases, which was Obama’s main objective, paid. In this they wagged not only the tail of the presidency but also that of their Republican congressional leaders; no mean feat.

Obama’s consolation is that he can now face the electorate without having to face down Congress on debt ceilings during election year. How scant that will turn out to be depends on the electorate’s perception of a President who was seen to lack leadership throughout the crisis.

He will not be helped by a global recession in the making, in great part due to fears that the US is about to lead the world in that direction. These fears have increased because of grave concerns, this side of the pond as the Atlantic is being quaintly called, that begging bowls in Spain and Italy are being readied as both give a strong indication that they are about to go the way of Greece and Ireland.

What do the Maltese media have to say about all this? What the opposition? The government has, in fairness, kept the crisis on its radar screen.

Lawrence Gonzi must be praying that Armageddon can be staved off, that he will not be called upon yet again to shield Malta from the worst effects that now threaten to throw out of kilter the country’s progress out of the recent recession. Wonder what Joseph Muscat has in mind?

Our healthcare is under threat

Having said all of which, markets are playing silly billies as Western governments in hock to unbridled capitalism and/or excessive welfarism regard the future with not a little concern. About welfare and recurring accusations from Labour, normally made in the run-up to an election, that this government is about to renege on free healthcare, it is well to comment.

Rather like Macbeth haranguing her husband that they were in it “too deep” to even consider giving up on the murderous project they had embarked upon, the Nationalist Party and the Labour Party have dug themselves too deep in the healthcare trenches to raise their heads above the parapet. Yet raise their heads they must if they are to call for a ceasefire, a truce, that could make the system less all-encompassing, less cost-prohibitive for the treasury – the taxpayer.

Sane elements in both parties agree, in private at least, that (a) the current approach is unsustainable and (b) that a fresh look into the system is required to make healthcare less of a political football and one that takes into consideration the need to make it less all-embracing. Nobody this sight of sanity disagrees with this, in principle, but there is much madness going on.

Before the 1996 election I had urged the imposition of some form of subscription fee, not least because it was common knowledge, still is, that the system of collecting every pill under the sun – free, of course – was being abused; still is. If something is free, the mental process went, one is free to avail oneself of it. Alfred Sant, to his credit, introduced a prescription fee of €1.25 and all hell broke loose, demons flapping all over Parliament as the Nationalist Party in opposition opposed the measure and removed it when re-elected in 1998.

There is no doubt that a prescription fee of, say, €2.30, should be introduced. Both political parties should have the guts to announce their agreement in a bipartisan statement. Medicines provided free of charge run into scores of millions of euros; trawling back the odd million is right and just.

Both parties should also be able to agree, initially in private talks, that earners over a certain bracket should pay for their medicines – either the full price or a percentage thereof as jargon would have it; an example of the rich helping those far worse off than themselves. Here we would have a shining example of social justice.

Neither party would dream of doing this unless the other were willing to get on board. Together, they would set another shining example, this time of a shared concern for the national interest.

I will not be around to see it, but whether the Nationalist Party or the Labour Party likes it or not, demography will impose the necessity to charge for some healthcare in some form or another.

As the population of the elderly grows and that of the younger generations decreases, a revision of ‘free healthcare for all’ is inevitable. The alternative is revolution by the young.

Manic thoughts?

Cultural heavyweights were correct to stand up against any incursion that would compromise the vernacular creation of Richard England’s Manikata church. I have to admit that from what I read, the intention to create space for this and that, by burrowing underground, need not compromise the architecture of the church and the spatial context in which it nestles. I am open to correction.

Whatever the outcome, and it appears that listing the church goes a long way to prevent it being compromised, the final outcome has to be one that does nothing to prevent the place being part of Malta that is forever England.