I’m not at all sure where the nation stands today, 35 odd years after Ġiġa Camilleri – Malta’s most infamous mother – was found guilty of murdering her eight-year-old son Twanny in the late 1960s.

In Malta, if you criticise the Nationalists, you’re Labour. And if you criticise Labour you’re Nationalist- Michela Spiteri

I do know that the story was recently resurrected and revisited on Xarabank, which spilled over two Fridays, and from the little bits I watched, it occurred to me that Ġiġa may well be Malta’s Amanda Knox. All this time later, I suspect the jury may still be out on that murder.

To me, the really interesting part, however, is my reaction to the whole thing. Not just my indifference to the case and the reasons as to why it was re-opened and re-investigated, if indeed it was. More telling, is the fact that I’m not really interested in changing my mind.

As far as I am concerned, Ġiġa murdered her son. I was brought up believing she did and it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a couple of Xarabank episodes and some DNA samples to take me out of my comfort zone and convince me otherwise.

To liken the situation to onions, broccoli, mushrooms, green-peppers – foods people love to hate, often without concrete basis, might seem farcical. And yet, the same sort of principle, diluted somewhat, applies here.

If you grow up convinced you don’t like mushrooms, you’ll probably die thinking you don’t. That people may try to convince you that you’ve got it all wrong, does little to alter your mindset. Sometimes, changing your mind requires a super-human effort. And that sort of rigidity is actually pretty dangerous and frightening.

Especially when you’re a lawyer, who ought to know a thing or two about miscarriages of justice and trial by media cases.

Any opinion I may have formulated about that murder is far from informed. It’s an inherited opinion I must have picked up and borrowed along the way. I have never opened up a court file nor read a shred of testimony. I didn’t even have the patience to sit through the two-fold Xarabank special. And yet, my convictions may as well be cast iron.

I suspect I’m not unique in feeling this way and must share this particular DNA with quite a few locals. And I’m probably one of the more enlightened, because I actually allow myself the luxury of revising my opinion and changing my mind a lot of time.

Sometimes I meet people on the street who tell me they like the way I write, but don’t always agree with what I say. When I tell them they’re not alone and that I don’t always agree with what I write after I’ve written it, they regard me curiously, almost suspiciously. Perhaps they interpret my seeming inconsistency as fickle and flippant. I see it differently.

You see, conviction is a wonderful thing, but it takes an unusual courage to re-arrange and re-adjust your point of view. Especially when it comes to politics, which here in Malta, like religion and ‘Ġiġa’, is untouchable, and more often than not, an opinion which other people have taken upon themselves to make for you.

My political writing debut with this newspaper occurred this time last year. Until then, I didn’t really trust myself to have an opinion because I know that my sort of ‘sideways thinking’ doesn’t cheerfully lend itself to our political climate.

In Malta, if you criticise the Nationalists, you’re Labour. And if you criticise Labour you’re Nationalist. And since I do both, I’m a political pariah. I criticise the Nationalists far more, because they’re the incumbent, so, I expect much more from them. Only last week I was reprimanded by someone from the PN for being highly unfair to Lawrence Gonzi in my last article, and almost simultaneously berated by a PL acolyte for paying Gonzi a compliment when I called him a smooth talker with extraordinary powers of persuasion.

I can’t bear being put under a political microscope. Which is why I value the correspondence I receive from people, from both sides of the political divide, who ‘get it’, who recognise that I am not interested in having or pushing an agenda.

I have no hesitation in saying that I enjoy listening to Gonzi talk. He’s a gifted talker, who also possesses that rare (in politicians) ability, to make Maltese sound prettier than it actually is. But then, I’m equally capable of recognising bad behaviour when I see it.

If Austin Gatt, a long-time MP, who, if nothing else, should have amassed some gravitas over the years, finds nothing inappropriate about telling the rest of us that he and his chums have just taken a leak, to me, that’s a small tragedy.

The really troubling part is that if a Labour MP displayed the same unbearable arrogance and cracked a lavatory joke on national television, there’d have been national uproar. It would have been curtains for the MP, with every journalist clamouring for his resignation.

And this has always been Labour’s biggest problem. PL, like Ġiġa, don’t get away with anything, never mind murder.

There’s an unfair deeply-seated unwillingness to forgive, forget and silence our childhood indoctrinations where PL are concerned. The 1980s was essentially about violence, not just in Malta but all over Europe. Think Brigate Rosse, IRA, Baader Meinhof.

If the PN were in power then, I’m pretty sure there’d have been as much violence, but we wouldn’t still be talking about it today. That has always been the fundamental difference between the two parties. Whatever PL does, PN can do as well, even better, without getting caught or a reputation in the process.

It’s hard to numb out and unlearn stuff we grew up believing and even harder to stop believing in something we idolised and romanticised. It takes an extraordinarily great leap of faith.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com