It was December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception in Cospicua, and while the sun shone salubriously and the band played joyously in the city square, a bit distant from my roof garden, I was observing and reflecting on life as it went by.

Moored near dock number six was one of the longest crude oil tankers to visit, the Augusta, while the ugly hulk of the Aleutian Key oil rig stood by, some say waiting to be hauled to Turkey for dismantling into scrap iron. Few know but that Signor Palumbo has brought over several brand-new cranes and put the older ones for sale by auction during the last year or so.

Most of the docks are full, and the ship repair business is going well for Palumbo. Many have also complained about the mysterious generator-like noise which seems to be befuddling all experts in noise control, but almost none have noticed the unhealthy smoke belching out of ‘sick’ ships being repaired at Palumbo’s shipyards.

That afternoon, I noticed huge plumes of smoke billowing out of the chimneys of the Tellerude, another giant of a tanker in dock 4, which then strayed over onto the Fuq San Pawl area and beyond onto Fgura and Żabbar. Ships’ chimney smoke has been found to contain cancer-causing heavy metals like vanadium and is more polluting than the discharge from normal vehicular traffic.

What a lovely sight right slam into the heart of the fabulous, historic Three Cities. I wondered if it is worth living glamorously but dangerously at the same time. If the locals and the foreign settlers only knew.

In spite of Malta being a safe haven as far as terrorism goes, it itself is an open prison, where the local top cats or upper class terrorise the helpless lower scale of society into submission and modern-day slavery

Not far away, at the corner of Alexander and St Lazarus streets, rubbish has been piling up into a mini mountain for two weeks and even after notices were sent to the local council, the three local deputies, the prime minister, and the minister in charge of local councils, nothing has been done about it.

Worse still, the Opposition leader and his TV station were notified but no steps were ever taken to report and to remove the rubbish pile. Of course, the Queen was never invited to go through there.

The fat boy around the other corner suddenly decided to let the local world know that he ought to be held as a respectable DJ and opened up his stereo full blast to the annoyance of most elderly residents and the not so elderly. The numerous complaints to the police over the years have always fallen on deaf ears, and there is no chance in hell that they will ever be supplied with a hearing aid.

Then the church bells started ringing and the fireworks lit off supposedly to scare the devil away, so tradition dictates. However, to me, it seemed the spirit of the festa was more of a hellish one than divine.

My observations and reflections led me to believe that this ‘happy isle’ of festas and saints, sunshine, tourism and blue sea is not all that safe and sound as the local leaders promote it to be. There are certain wheels missing in the Maltese machine, and this is messing things up badly. The worst part of it all is the lack of discipline from top to bottom, minus any semblance of honesty, fairness and justice.

Transparency, accountability and meritocracy have gone to the dogs. One could say, that in spite of Malta being a safe haven as far as terrorism goes, it itself is an open prison, where the local top cats or upper class terrorise the helpless lower scale of society into submission and modern-day slavery.

Freedom of speech is muffled in a very subtle way, and a free-thinking man can still be incarcerated for airing his humble opinion. Fear and helplessness with the resultant apathy rule the day.

One great proof is the law unanimously passed lately which severely punishes anyone attacking a public official.

This twisted law divides the nation into two classes, the higher class which wields the power and the lower class which is forced to submit to the higher power.

This is totally against European law, as the first commandment of the European Constitution very clearly stipulates that “All states and all citizens are equal”.

Heavy motorcycles and cars withsilencers in need of repair zoom by with such a loud noise and with such excessive speed that it seems they are hugging a race track, or better still, as if there were no tomorrow. Pedestrians and cyclists are ignored and always looked down upon by insensitive and callous motorists as if they were a nuisance, a hindrance, a stumblingblock deserving no respect whatsoever. Pedestrian rights did you say? Go tell it to the nowhere-to-be-seen traffic police.

In spite of Malta being a member of the European Union, the collective consciousness of the Maltese people insists on clinging onto its old ways of thinking, refuses to change and adapt for the better, and still enjoys throwing its rubbish onto public spaces, shoots down European wild birds as a sport, wallows in its orgiastic lawlessness, worships the gods of corruption, rejects and snuffs out the open-minded innovators and trailblazers, and rewards those members with the highest IQ in evil cunning similar to the wild beasts of the jungle.

The law courts and Parliament together with the totally clueless and inefficient police force form a triad of destructive dictatorship wrongly chosen by the people against the same people. Much money and effort are spent every year trying to correct these erratic systems, but things always remain the same.

One could say that the economy, although touted as one of the healthiest in Europe, could in fact any day soon be in shambles, as its backbone is extremely fragile, and which could be smashed to pieces by one single act of madness by some discredited force like Isis.

Piracy, the prime source of livelihood in the past, has resurfaced. Internet gaming and financial services are areas one should keep a close, vigilant eye on.

The income from the apparent surge in tourism is nothing more than an effect of low-cost air travel.

The pressure-cooker feeling of the nation is coming to a boiling point, and because of the daily erratic governance and of the people’s intransigence in general, this is bound to explode some day and leave the nation in tatters and begging for aid.

As the saying goes, “what comes upmust come down; spinning wheel gottago round”.

One must pay his dues, and the time of reckoning for the nation of Malta is almost here, when the ill-begotten wealth of the fat cats of society will be dissipated through an act of divine intervention, or through Karmic debt one could say (the universal principle of physics which demands that what goes out must return), and as a result the people will suffer a deep economic depression the likes of which Europe has never seen before.

Frank Theuma is secretary of the Cottonera Residents Association and Moviment Laburisti Batuti.