This is what passes for political discourse on the eve of a general election.
This headline translates as “Payment cheques all year round if you vote to get them”. Robert Abela, addressing the elderly, sums up his political stump speech to what elections should never be, a transaction.
Social services and support are presented as a gift, a bribe even, in exchange for perpetual support. There is no reference to what policies make those payments possible or even how any of those payments can be sustained to ensure that the hardship pensioners are experiencing as the prices of essential goods skyrocket can be sustainably addressed.
Pay us to pay you to love us.
And then someone says, it’s the economy, stupid. No, it isn’t. Gimme Gimme Gimme is what it really is. That has nothing to do with the economy. That is a cultural of dependence, deference, and unquestioning gratitude, the toxic combination that reduces our political process to an auction of the irresponsible.