While everyone was following the non-vote yesterday, live-tweeting it and getting more frustrated by the second, I was happily ignoring it all. The shock, the horror: a journalist who doesn’t care about the political goings-on of the country? Whatever next?

But that’s just it, isn’t it? There was nothing going on. We all knew that yesterday’s supposed motion of no confidence would fizzle up into nothing. Much like anything else related to politics on this funny island.

So instead of getting more and more annoyed by the minute, I chose to spend the evening pursuing the following endeavours:

• Rescuing lady-birds from my spinach leaves
• Making peanut butter and oat cookies
• Catching up online with the one friend who (cleverly) also wasn’t following the non-event.
• Finishing the book I was reading (Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, a fantastic read if anyone is interested).

At one point I did get into a bit of a panic and reached for Twitter, my hands a-shaking. Was I missing some momentous piece of history? Had any of the MPs seen the light, eschewed party lines and decided to do the decent thing? But no.

Things were pretty much going on as expected, with our MPs being anything but honourable and doing everything they could to plunge this country into more political crap.

"We all knew that yesterday’s supposed motion of no confidence would fizzle up into nothing"


Admittedly, I didn’t manage to cut the umbilical chord definitively enough to ignore the whole thing. So towards 11pm I checked in again to see whether there had been any significant developments. In a nutshell:

• Government wins no-confidence motion – surprise, surprise
• 69 MPs manage to waste over 12 hours of tax payers’ money in narcissistic monologues that simply pandered to their own sense of self-importance
• Marlene Farrugia attempts to recapture the spotlight with more hot air
• Claudette Buttigieg regales us with the obvious, i.e. that Konrad Mizzi is not fit for purpose

There were a gazillion other statements made by each and every MP in the House. That’s right. Each and everyone one of them regaled us with a monologue. Not because any of them had anything particularly clever to say, but simply because none of them can bear to be left out of the limelight. And because, democracy.

Well, ain’t I happy that I took a shortcut and got it all from the final reports, rather than wasting a whole evening to hear the obvious. That the government was going to do SFA about the public’s general dissatisfaction at the way Panamagate is being handled.

The solution to the ridiculous state-of-affairs Malta has descended into will not be solved in parliament. It can only solved when the prime minister decides to do what is right and actually take action within the party echelons.

Yesterday’s exercise was nothing but an exercise in ego-stroking, the demolishing of a no confidence motion that the PL’s comfortable majority made impossible to succeed.

And I’ve wasted enough time on our politicians without also wasting my evening enabling this ego-stroking.

 

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