Former US presidential candidate and world renowned neurosurgeon Ben Carson once said that: “The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.”
Carson said that in reference to the situation in the US in the 1990s. However, if one had to analyse those words carefully and apply them to our beautiful island, we can definitely relate them today.
Values define us as a nation. We are a nation built through sweat and tears over a very long period of time and no matter how far back we look, Malta was always renowned for its strong values.
It seems that lately we, as Malta, have joined a race to allow, legalise and open the borders to anything and everything.
The thing that worries me is the reason behind this. Is the current administration doing this in order to please different sectors of society and win as many votes as possible? Or are they doing it because they sincerely believe that it is the right thing to do?
With the way the government is currently introducing these laws, it seems that they are in a race against time to legalise and introduce everything before a particular deadline.
Lately we have joined a race to allow, legalise and open the borders to anything and everything
Even the way legislations change from the first reading to the final reading in Parliament, it is evident that not enough work is being done prior to the Bill being put forward.
I’m also not a keen fan of having one thing inserted with another legislation so that it ties two distinct issues into one (ex. civil union and gay adoption). Although I’m a keen advocate of both civil rights, I don’t think that the government was being fair and honest to its word to combine them together.
It’s not right to include the civil liberties of minorities in a political game and risk them not going through. When this is done, one would be playing with the rights of others and that in itself is against the core values of our nation.
We live in a time where we can’t tell what our government believes in and what core values it upholds. One can argue that the Labour Party have a clear electoral manifesto that the people voted for in the election, yet some of the amendments and new legislation weren’t part of that, so that principle doesn’t hold on all issues.
What we need is clear direction from those that govern this country, direction based on clear values so that we know where they stand and where they want to steer this country in regard to the types of sectors they want to liberalise.
I’m sure that if there are 400,000 people in this country, you’re going to get 400,000 different opinions on where people stand on civil liberties, however what we want is a government that bases itself on strong moral values and not on electronic polls.
Alan Abela-Wadge is president of the Nationalist Party College of Councillors and a general election candidate, ninth district.