We Westerners have a mistaken impression of what cows actually signify in the Hindu religion. Because of the incongruity of it, we like to call them sacred cows and yet poor things, although they are not actually slaughtered and eaten their lives are a far cry from that led by the Kobe bull who drinks a beer a day, gets a daily massage with sake and eats the most unadulterated grain fodder. It is no wonder that Kobe beef costs an arm and a leg. Indian cows on the other hand wander aimlessly throughout the day indifferent to traffic whether human, animal and vehicular.
They forage continually, eating whatever they find and return to their homes in the evening to be milked. Instead of being humanely slaughtered like the Kobe champions, Indian cows, always a bit on the scrawny side, die a natural death. Nothing very sacred about that is there?
Strangely enough we tend to treat politicians like Kobe bulls rather than Indian cows. Ironically it is they, the politicians, who should treat us like that and we who should consider them to be mere cowherds, but before I get further enmeshed in this ever growing pile of cowpats and bee-ess-aitch-one-tee, I would like to state categorically that I am sick to the teeth of local politics and if you have your head screwed on right, so should you; hence all this bovine gobbledygook.
Were our leaders as administratively savvy as they are at playing the game of politics, then Malta would be a Utopia. They have all at one time manipulated, brainwashed, hoodwinked and deceived the electorate, playing an elaborate game of divide and rule that may keep them in power but produces very little benefit for us the people, which is what democracy should all be about; namely you and I, and not Lawrence Gonzi and Joseph Muscat.
For well onto half a century we have had elections that were fraught with Sturm und Drang wherein the campaign literally brought the country to a standstill; not only for the couple of months before the actual election but up to a year before. Then it takes another six months for the same party to reconstitute itself... This is a ridiculous situation. There are so many people with such a lot to lose that emotions run high and the seemingly incurable tendency to only govern half of Malta and let the other half fend for itself, like the poor Indian cows, has produced an inertia that will in the end choke us.
I think it is high time that Drs Gonzi and Muscat gave local politics a rethink and stopped this mudslinging once and for all. Let us encourage reconciliation. Let them work together. The rabid divisiveness that has been with us all our lives has sickened me. We must stop thinking Blue and Red. We must think Malta. Here we are, a quarter of the size of Catania thinking we are the salt of the earth and that our fledgling democracy is capable of holding it all together. Well it's not; which is partly why so many people voted YES in the EU referendum. It makes sense doesn't it? It will make even more sense when the fines for not keeping our sides of the bargain have to be paid out of our taxes.
It will make further sense when after years of indecision and procrastination the sources of alternative energy that have not even been remotely tapped will mean that our targets will not ever be met!
The solar panels on Mater Dei are being installed now, which, considering how long the mother of all hospitals had been in the planning and building stages let alone the operative one, is simply mindboggling isn't it?
One party is waxing and the other is waning. Neither is fit to govern as the incumbents need to overhaul the party from top to bottom and the opposition needs to rebuild a shattered and disillusioned party that was led from one ignominious defeat to another by a man who would not let go and call it a day; a man who for all his intelligence finds dropping embarrassing clangers irresistible. Between them, for reasons that could not have been more divergent, Dom Mintoff and Alfred Sant all but destroyed the MLP.
The PN on the other hand is proving to be an idol with feet of clay and that clay is cracking and flaking under the pressures of being in the EU, being saddled with a recession, having a majority of one seat, disgruntled backbenchers and above all being in government when it really should not have been. Sadly in March there was no viable option. We were almost hoodwinked by Alternattiva, for reasons that I find inscrutably difficult to understand, into voting for it knowing full well that constitutionally a seat for AD would have equalled an MLP victory even if the PN garnered more votes than the MLP. That is past history. We voted with a gun to our heads... yet again!
There seems to be no end to it in sight. Should I have the temerity to criticise one herd of sacred cows - the Kobe type ones not the Indian ones - I am immediately branded as having switched political allegiances. What a cave and house! Grow up please. I do not want to be part of a political allegiance. They are bad news. What I want is what is good for Malta. I wish we could throw political allegiances into the Gozo Channel where it is said there are chasms so deep that even the Brits couldn't fathom them!
kzt@onvol.net