Malta’s political landscape is littered with events that should not have happened, with speeches that should not have been made and with political manoeuvres and subterfuges that should have been avoided like the plague.

The situation in this regard is no different to that obtaining in many other democracies elsewhere. Other countries are worse off. Some dictators, for example, not only suppress their people but they also embrace, and even perpetuate, atrocities on their opponents with vengeance. What is happening in Syria is a spine-chilling reminder of the extent to which certain regimes go to repress dissent.

A number of dictators have bitten the dust but others are still alive and kicking. Even in those countries where revolutions have toppled hardened regimes, as in nearby Libya, the situation has yet to stabilise itself. Democracies live by established, acceptable standards but this is not to say that all is well in all democracies. Many grave sins are committed in democracies and politicians generally are earning greater distrust than ever before. Indeed, many are blaming most of the social and economic ills facing Europe today on politicians for their lack of resolve to tackle problems in time.

So many politicians everywhere promise, on taking over, they will work for a new way of doing politics, only to falter in no time when they come face to face with difficulties, not necessarily of their own making.

Nice words said at the hustings are all too often forgotten, promises evaporate into thin air and arrogance takes over, until an election comes round again when politicians once again descend from the rarefied political atmosphere they inhabit to unashamedly start wooing the people again for their support.

And so the cycle goes on, election after election. No wonder Einstein found politics more difficult than physics. Charles De Gaulle had an equally valid quote: “I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians”.

Unfortunately, however, there is as yet no valid alternative but voters can, at least, make a difference by choosing the right people to represent them in what the politicians like to call the highest institution in the land. Far too often, candidates are elected not on merit, as they should, but on irrelevant considerations. Which explains why a Parliament, including ours, may have members who do not deserve to be sitting on the government or opposition benches, members who see their election mainly as means for self-gratification and self-advancement rather than, as former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami has so often correctly stressed, as a means to serve the people and the country.

The country is crying out for people who only seek to make it to Parliament out of a deep sense of vocation. What has been happening in Parliament over the past weeks and days is a political aberration, a blight on the political landscape and an example of how politics should not be done.

Malta is crying out for political leaders who are forceful and resourceful enough to distinguish between what is purely of party political interest and what ought to be the country’s priorities at a given point in time. The current situation, where the parties are often locked in purely party matters when they should be seriously looking into ways and means how the country can escape further the impact of the financial trouble on the continent, is very sad.

Who is going to take Malta out of this political quagmire?