Another Independence celebration is around the corner and it is time once more to brace ourselves for the self-congratulatory speeches. What passes for gravitas demands that the self-adulation (how far we’ve come!) is balanced by a furrowed brow about the challenges we still face: Unity! Civility! No one left behind!

And, sooner or later, someone or everyone will say something about their side always having been on the right side of history. As the late philosopher Bernard Williams once acerbically noted, to believe you’re on the right side of history is essentially to believe the universe is cheering you on.

If, on the other hand, you think it’s self-evident that history has no right side – Jesus Christ was crucified, Genghis Khan founded the world’s most successful empire, MacDonald’s is thriving in Paris – we need a different way of thinking about Independence.

A lot of the speeches and reports will focus on the economy. They always do. And there’s no doubt that economic well-being says something important about freedom from constraints and dependence – whether we’re a household or a nation. But let’s remember that Independence was primarily about something else.

It was about the Maltese people gaining control over the State. That didn’t mean just the formal liberty to vote at election time. We had that already (although elections could be cancelled and the Constitution suspended if the colonial masters so decreed). It was also about liberty in practice: the ability to participate in decision-making, to set the very agenda democratically, to hold government accountable.

If our politicians and personages of state are going to lecture us on how the universe is cheering us on, they need to give an account not just of the state of the economy and standard of living.

They need to give an account of the State. Which way is it going? We enjoy more consumer power. We enjoy less interference in lifestyle choices.

But that is the power for us to do things in our private lives. What about our power over politicians, who should be our servants not our masters?

It takes only brief reflection to see that, without democratic scrutiny of our governments, even our satisfaction about economic performance is so much whistling in the dark.

Without democratic scrutiny of our governments, even our satisfaction about economic performance is so much whistling in the dark

Unless we know exactly what commitments Joseph Muscat has made, on our behalf, with Electrogas, the consortium that will run the new power station, we have no way of knowing whether what we have will be an economic booster or an albatross round the neck of the next generation.

And that can be said about every major public contract, signed in our name, binding for generations, that is still under wraps.

To point this out is not to promote Project Fear. We should know well enough, by now, that in a post-2008 world, uncertainty about the future can make markets very volatile – enough to wreck countries.

We also know that, until they went bust, Spain and Ireland were enjoying enviable rates of growth in the financial and property sectors.

Now, let’s be clear. Our pattern of economic growth – in both the property market and the financial sector – is not identical to those cases. I only mention them to point out something more fundamental and obvious. Unless an economy is resilient to unexpected shocks, its growth in the short term isn’t necessarily good news. On the contrary, it can make a crash more violent.

Are we vulnerable to shocks? Of course. Our economy has always been exposed. It has become more so. Not only because of globalisation in general but because of the economic turbulence in Europe and the political turbulence to our south.

Are we becoming more or less resilient? I’d say five reasons make a strong case for less.

Firstly, although our property boom is not driven by one factor alone, an important one is the Libyan market. What happens if Libya begins to get its house in order? Are we in the situation where we have to pray that Libya doesn’t sort itself out too quickly as otherwise too many investors in the property market might find themselves in trouble?

Second, one problem with the government’s economic cronyism – apart from the injustice in itself – is that it means the government is over-riding market signals and deciding it can guess the market winners, from the so-called American University of Malta to the consortium that will run important segments of our health sector, despite being an unknown player till it turned up in Malta.

If the government has guessed wrong, important economic resources will have been wasted, if not stolen. That is also fertile ground for an economic shock wave.

Third, it’s a banality of economic development that, without faith in the rule of law, real inward investment is difficult to attract. At least for long. With the precipitous fall in the reputation of our police force, we are destabilising another important pillar.

Fourth, it is one thing to secure agreement between social partners on strategic goals – the way, say, Germany does. It’s another to co-opt possible dissenters among your social partners – that is, give them a share of the spoils. The latter means you’re buying their silence and giving up on the benefits of criticism, that can lead to correcting course before it’s too late.

Fifth, there is the targeting of dissent and critics in the media by the government communications arm. It goes beyond rejecting the critics’ arguments to mocking their appearance and calling them vulgar names. That won’t stop some critics but it will inhibit others.

What will be lost isn’t just free speech. It will also be another of democracy’s strengths: that of enriching our understanding of what’s happening by free exchange of experience and ideas.

Maybe we’ll make it through in the end. We might still wing it when the next crisis crops up. Let’s hope so.

But let’s not lay too much store by the universe cheering us on. After all, it faces certain heat death. Cheering us on may be another example of its black humour.

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