Listening to the President’s call for unity in her opening-of-Parliament speech immediately brought to mind the Prime Minister-elect’s words on the same lines. No surprise since, as expected, she basically amplified on what he had already said in a few words – an amplification which pointed to the responsibility of the many across the board who wield some sort of influence on us all.
Whether her call to heal the divisions created by a bitterly acrimonious electoral campaign will be heeded or merely prove a lip service exercise will continue to spur more political commentary.
As much as I would love to see and live through a refreshed spirit of goodwill, I am not very hopeful. True that optimism does not come easy to me. But it is hard to be optimistic living in a country where polarisation is fuelled and fed by both the Labour and Nationalist parties through their respective mass media. And spare me any rebuttal on the lines of pluralisation, for the fact that both One and Net have been legally allowed to air flies in the face of a genuine democracy. How are the scars of political recriminations ever going to heal when the bulk of the electorate either listen to one or the other and have been doing so for years?
In fact, the very opposite is happening, with acerbic barbs made day after day by readers of reportage, editorials and opinion pieces in independent newspapers as well as by so-called political analysts, especially when commenting upon the headlines and editorials of the day.
It cannot be otherwise when Malta’s two biggest political parties are endowed with their very own TV and radio stations churning out wholesale propaganda to brainwash their audience, while wiping out collective memory. This is precisely why propaganda is so insidious. Factor in a mastery of spin – a lethal weapon which makes an art out of distortion – and any calls for unity are utterly futile. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell could not have said it better.
The situation is aggravated by the State-owned TV and radio that invariably tout what the government of the day imposes. The end result? A long line of strident squealers blatantly ‘persuading’ and ‘empowering’ their followers while in actual fact numbing their minds.
It is hard to be optimistic living in a country where polarisation is fuelled and fed by both the Labour and Nationalist parties through their respective mass media
If our two major political parties were truly democratic, they would go beyond stripping public broadcasting of partisan affiliation (which is long overdue); they would strip themselves of their TV and radio and dissociate themselves thoroughly from vitriolic blogs. That would leave the newspapers as an arena to wage partisan battles but at least scaled down.
Of course the chances of this ever taking place are next to zilch, more so when people are reading less and less while watching more and more. Significantly, watching does not automatically mean seeing things as they are. To make matters worse, we now have the phenomenon of fake news to contend with.
On a brighter note, anyone is free to ignore the entire show of political shenanigans. Yet this does not grind a halt to the dangers and consequences of a split, bamboozled population.
Take the current controversy over same-sex marriages. This issue dominated the news almost immediately the election was over despite government and Opposition working on the same page while debating a few points of terminology. Rather than getting hot under the collar or refusing to be bothered in the first place, it would be much more pertinent for commentators to regard it as a clever bait to divert attention from much weightier issues.
I don’t in any way mean any disrespect towards gays and lesbians. But by choosing to address same-sex marriages first and foremost and with the summer recess a few days away, the government, already buoyed by a massive electoral triumph and hammering home the issue of equal rights, has succeeded in turning the spotlight off the need for good governance (not mentioned in the President’s speech), which it has been turning its back on for well over a year.
This strategy is also distracting the Opposition from the next big thing, more so since the Nationalist Party is scrambling to find a new leader and begin to stand on its feet while its own discreditable actions in the recent past are still pretty fresh in our memory.
Nor are One and Net the only contributors to the mire. Another fundamental culprit is an education system which does not promote critical thinking skills or a sense of history. Even geography is becoming hazier and hazier in a much flaunted multicultural and borderless world.
When are we going to put an end to rehashing? When are we going to stop equating schooling with education? Once more, such change is unlikely because it sustains the status quo.
In addition to all this, the 21st-century zeitgeist is inevitably impacting our tiny island. Driven by shameless egotism in a decadent, materialistic world which has long embraced money at any cost, today’s zeitgeist vaunts euphemisms of political correctness to the point where rights are bandied about all over the place with little thought – let alone space – to responsibilities, good manners, ethical practices and accountability.
Meanwhile, much is made of vapid slogans such as “unity in diversity” while social cohesion has virtually become a thing of the past, incidentally just like good manners and a sense of shame.