No one recognises better what has happened to our country than our Italian neighbours. I urge you to follow the commentaries and insights on the Italian media. Italian journalists are observing the signs of the times in this country and they understand Malta today better than we do.
This chilling report by the Corriere della Sera recognises us as corleonesi. It recognises the omertà that had allowed the Mafia to take root in Sicily and in the southern Italian regions in our behaviour as a nation these last 30 hours.
This reporter is not impressed by our supposed outpouring of grief at the barbaric assassination of the only journalist who fought corruption in this country.
Like him I was at the gathering in front of the courts this afternoon. It would impress no one. Most of the people there were guests at each other’s wedding over the last several decades. We barely counted 200. We knew we wanted something but we weren’t sure how to get it done. We felt sadness and anger and fear. But we were a small stampede, without order and without a goal. Two hundred souls marching aimlessly headlong as the world around us collapsed.
It is but a few hundred people who are really out there timidly saying something must be done.
Passing a comment on Facebook is apparently for most sufficiently proportionate to express their outrage.
The Italian press covering Malta’s darkest week have seen it all before. They have seen politicians reading from a script about fighting a war on corruption when clearly they are seeped deep in its stench. They have seen policemen making a show of enforcing the law but standing aside as powerful criminals are given a free hand in exchange for hospitality and special treatment.
And they have seen a population, leaderless and afraid, drowning its concerns in the illusion of normality. A population that convinces itself that laws, rights, institutions and politics are for a private clan they will never form part of. A population that feels helpless about making a difference. A population that would rather be indifferent, than angry and afraid.
Daphne Caruana Galizia spent years trying to shake us out of our slumber as we walked into this gilded cage. As the Corriere della Sera correspondent observes even as she was blown to bits in a furious explosion, we would rather not listen.
When all institutions failed the people of this country, the people feel they have no choice but to fail themselves. If the police, the attorney general, the prime minister, parliamentarians across the aisle, judges and magistrates are happy to look away, why don’t we all?
We cannot let this happen. We must speak up. We must act. We need to get our country back.