MESSAGE TO THE GOVERNMENT – a need to devote time to the lower divisions of the “Go-As-You-Please” e
Since being resoundingly elected in 2013 and then further being resoundingly re-elected, this Government has played in the Premier Division with amazing economic results that have taken it to the top of the European League.
The economy is booming, employment is booming, Government finance is booming and statistics constantly show Malta as best performer. The ratings by financial agencies like Fitch have been resoundingly excellent. Malta is topping the pile in Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.
Great stuff – and one further big boost – there is no Opposition at all except for a group of disarrayed has-beens who are more interested in biting lumps out of each other while competing to be the foremost to make most political capital while riding on the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder bandwagon and doing their treacherous utmost to damage their own country overseas.
In the meanwhile, the life of the so-called common-man-in-the-street has continued as it always has done in this country; that is, everybody does exactly as they want to do, without fear of reprisal and enforcement and in the knowledge that despite scores of Authorities for this and that, nothing actually happens and all Authority representatives collect their annual fee, issues loads of statements and PRs but let things stand as they always have been.
The construction industry has been running rife for years and years, Did it have to take buildings to collapse and somebody to drop off a construction site every day before action was taken as it now has been? Do we have to witness tragedies before somebody, somewhere says “let’s try and do something about it”?
New regulations have come into force for the piteous use of horses in karozzins – but did it have to take years and years and years of lobbying before the regulations appeared?
And so, life goes on. Driving standards and road etiquette is notoriously non-existent in our greatest “Go-As-You-Please” forum. The only sign of any action is that a few parking tickets are issued on a daily basis but the crazy helter-skelter of virtual total non-observance of safe driving just goes on and on and on.
Do you own a garage? No worries – leave the garage empty or fill it with junk and take up a street parking space.
Do you own a caravan? No worries – park it in the road in winter and now that summer is here, go to your favourite seaside place and plonk it there. Obstructing passageways for the public? – who cares; bad luck.
Love camping? No worries – plenty of camping spots even if you are breaking the law and dumping your sanitary material into the sea or a nearby field. After all, anything goes. Rent umbrellas and sunbeds? Take up all the beach and frown and be unpleasant should anybody dare to pitch their own umbrella there.
Missed the refuse collection? Take it a few street corners away and dump it there.
After rents went totally out of hand over the process of many years, now action has been taken to regulate. Did we have to wait so long?
Those are part and parcel of our everyday lives in Malta and Gozo.
I have ALWAYS maintained that the cures for all these ills are (a) strict enforcement and (b) the most severe of fines because Maltese and Gozitan minds dwell mainly on money, money, money. On the other hand Maltese politicians dwell on personal votes at elections – day-in, day-out.
ONE thing is for sure – it’s a good job that Agencies like Fitch do not base their assessment on discipline and maintenance of standards.
If they did, Malta would rate in the Z Minus Minus Category!
ALBERT JEROME FENECH
