Imagine this scene from a movie or a TV series. Police surround a building taken over by criminals and try to re-establish a lawful situation. The criminals have taken hostages and are holding guns to their heads. The police are armed, but the criminals make it very clear that any action taken by the forces of law and order threatens the lives of the hostages. 

Under the lights of the news cameras, the criminals take themselves out of the equation as being the cause and hinge pin of the situation, and rewrite the equation as action by the police will be action against the hostages.

That is the sorry situation that this government has pushed our country into.

Malta has become the hostage. The few individuals at the heart of the sleaze and corruption are milking it for all its worth, for as long as it lasts, while cunningly stepping to the side, hiding behind the ‘hostage’.

They do this by repeating ad nauseam that the criticism levelled at them and at their wrongdoing is an attack on Malta. There you have it. The criminals have taken themselves out of the equation, and they who are harming Malta point the finger at those who would rescue it.

The truth of the matter lies that those of us, who have, and have always had, the country at heart, are not doing any harm to the country at all.

The harm is being done by the actions of those who are treating national assets as their own personal property.

While this hostage country is bleeding, the criminals rub their hands in glee and line their palms with silver

They are using public funds for making up myriad positions of trust for those that they trust to keep their mouths shut in whatever circumstance, while appointing cronies to key institutional and constitutional posts. They have encouraged the destruction and ravage of the little countryside that we have left while blocking out the sun with one tower after the other.

Members of the press are bullied and excluded if they do not toe the line of the spiel emanating from Castille.

In the meantime, allegations of corruption have become so much the order of the day, that we have practically become immune to them, and just turn the page of the paper to the next story. They then have the gall to say that the only thing that the Opposition has to talk about is corruption, as if it is something irrelevant or unrelated to their behaviour… and they do it with a straight face, almost as if they have started to believe their own lies themselves.

The thing is that corruption is a blanket term that does not refer to one, or even many, cases. Corruption is the state of mind that this government exists in at so many levels. Any semblance of correctness or morality has been abandoned, and anything goes, blatantly and ‘in your face’.

Then comes the sidestepping. The Opposition is harming Malta and Gozo. They are working against the ‘national interest’.

What is this national interest? It is their personal interest and not ours.

The facts continue to show that whatever golden eggs are being laid are being ferreted away and shared among the select inner few, while most of the population has to struggle against an ever-increasing cost of living in order to make ends meet. There are no international economic crises, sky-high fuel prices or Libyan revolutions and civil wars as external factors negatively impacting on us, unlike what the Gonzi government had to, and did, weather.

The negative factors are coming from within. Utility prices have to factor in the guaranteed profits built in to the shameful contract for the new power station, while young people seeking to buy or rent their first accommodation simply cannot afford to.

And while this hostage country is bleeding, the criminals rub their hands in glee and line their palms with silver, hiding behind the old lie of a pretentious pretend-patriotism. Time has the habit of pushing truth up to the surface, and time will also prove to be the judge of who, in reality, has harmed the country in so many ways.

It is surely not those who are trying their best to restore decency and order to the free-for-all that Joseph Muscat’s band of merry men has led the country into.

The responsibility for this mess lies squarely with those same merry men who have hijacked the country, and are now holding our good name hostage, against any attempt to get to the bottom of their nefarious dealings.

It is a pity to see certain politicians on the Labour side, who while not having a corrupt bone in their body themselves, have no choice but to defend the indefensible, and sing along with the choir, or else…

Roberta Metsola is a Nationalist Party MEP.

This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece