There are a few facts of life we just can’t get away from. Labour won the last election in amazing style. Period. Maltese people in their huge majority love Joseph Muscat and their love seems to grow in proportion to whatever horror he is associated with. Period.
So my lot in this land seems sadly on the way down. Unless I do what others seem to be joyously doing and jump on the Muscat bandwagon, praising him to the sky.
Joseph Muscat – together with his wife and close associates – seems hell-bent on pushing the Muscat cult, which is being accepted by usually sane people. His followers love the way he struts and talks of our economic might.
Their belief is in a man who can do no wrong – except if it is needed for the country and its wellbeing. All wrongs committed by those close to him can be excused and forgotten. Most wrong-doers are in fact glorified and given plum positions.
Truly we are on the verge of a revolution like the one Erdogan started in Turkey where the man in power is not just strong but seen as a demi-god.
You hear it said over and over: as long as the economy ticks over why bother with the rubbish of civic society, or the ever groan-inducing call for good governance? More talk of rule of law? Oh what a bore, the mantra goes. We, the look-we-are-doing-so-well brigade, are so happy no rubbish about freedom of expression will move us.
After all – they add on – don’t we say all we wish and feel on social media? Why go on about the death of a journalist if it encourages foreigners to ask silly questions? ‘Let bygones be bygones’ is another mantra. No weeping lest we are termed negative or traitors.
This is how Erdogan and the other dictators treat democracy: as just another piece of rubbish. Even in the US the distortion has reached strange proportions.
Donald Trump’s spokesperson has just defended the president by saying that the harassment women have accused him of happened before he was elected president. Basically the people then had their say and, by voting him in, absolved him of all wrong.
‘Let bygones be bygones’ is another mantra. No weeping lest we are termed negative or traitors
That is exactly the reasoning being used here in tiny Malta. The majority of people are behind Joseph Muscat and his team. So sins are no longer sins. Votes or favourable polls wash away sins faster than priests at a confessional.
Erdogan, Trump, and Muscat are obsessed with having majorities to back them. Not because they love democracy or what it really represents but because by having the numbers they feel they can get away with anything.
The personality cult – where the might of the majority as represented by the supreme leader is always right – has gripped this land. What lies ahead is more lies, more hollowness, more adulation of people who have no moral standing, no interest in good governance or true liberty.
If the majority prefer living in gilded cages where all is glitz but devoid of values, it does not mean the majority is right. Being duped by lucre and economic strength does not make matters right.