Error message: Total System Failure

Computers are odd little things really. Being ultimately a machine, one would think their internal mechanics would become clearer to the user over time. But no! You can spend an entire lifetime glued to your PC, and even become an expert on the application of any given piece of software… but none of this experience will translate into an iota of real knowledge regarding how a computer actually works. 

Not so with any other machine I can think of. Take cars, for instance. Like a computer, you don’t actually need to know how an internal combustion engine functions to be able to drive. Yet if something goes wrong, your mechanic will normally give you a reasonably detailed account of precisely where the problem lies, and how it can be fixed (if at all). 

This means that in time, one builds up a small pool of knowledge regarding the general mechanical properties of the internal combustion engine… so that even if you can’t fix the problem yourself, you will at least not feel quite so helplessly adrift in a sea of unfathomable jargon.  

So when you turn the key in the ignition and nothing happens, you will know from past experience that it’s either the starter that’s gone, or the battery that’s flat. If your engine overheats there’s a fair chance that the coolant reservoir may be empty (if not, you’ll know you have a real problem on your hands). And if the engine suddenly starts emitting a noise not unlike a small army of rats being roasted alive with a flamethrower, it’s a safe bet that the fan-belt needs to be replaced.

And if, like an old Ford Laser I used to own, your car decides to stop working altogether every single time it rains, for no apparent reason… well, you might want to take a peek beneath the engine. The entire undercarriage might have one day fallen off (having been loosened by endless pot-hole jolts over the years), so that the spark-plugs are given a fresh coat of rainwater each time you drive through a puddle. 

And so on, and so forth.

Computers? Different ball-game entirely. When something goes wrong with your PC, you will normally be told something like: ‘ERROR MESSAGE 1919784: total computer failure due to unrecoverable fatal error.’ Followed by: ‘Windows is looking for a solution to the problem’. Followed by: ‘No solution found’. Followed by the irretrievable loss of whatever it was you were working on at the time. Followed by much blasphemy directed at a certain Mr William Gates, etc. 

And even if a computer technician does somehow salvage the hard disk, with or without the information it previously contained… you will be none the wiser regarding what exactly happened. There is no corresponding build-up in awareness of computer-related problems, as there is with planes, trains and automobiles. So you will be every bit as unprepared for the next disaster as you were for the previous one.  

This is probably why most people will respond to the average ‘total computer failure’ message by simply rebooting their PC, in the hope that the problem will go away on its own. Which, bizarrely, it very often does (until, of course, the same thing crops up later, and again later, and again later, etc.)

That, at any rate, has been my experience of the wonderful world of the personal computer. And it has been almost perfectly concomitant with my experience of the equally wonderful world of Maltese politics… which (let’s face it) has come to resemble a malfunctioning version of Microsoft Windows in, oh, so many ways.

OK, you don’t quite get ‘error messages’, like you do with a PC. Instead, you get ‘scandals’. Lots and lots of scandals. Little scandals. Large scandals. Scandals resulting in ministerial dismissals; scandals resulting in official enquiries and police investigations; scandals resulting in nothing at all (‘no solution found’, remember?). 

Well, what are all these scandals, exactly… if not a regular stream of subliminal error messages, sent out by a motherboard that is now so utterly riddled with bugs and viruses that its every function, its every file and its every last microchip has been irretrievably corrupted? 

And just like your last PC cataclysm, it is a system failure which just won’t go away no matter how many times you reboot. Not even a regular maintenance check every five years – when all the component parts of the motherboard are dismantled, and then reassembled to replace all the ‘chips’ that have been deemed inoperable – will make any difference. It just keeps happening: different variations of the same general pattern, repeated endlessly regardless who is actually in power at any given moment.

Let’s look at some of these error messages, shall we? The latest example involves allegations (which appear to be supported by documentary evidence) that the former Gozo Minister’s husband had provided free construction work to constituents on the eve of the last election, at the expense of the tax-payer. 

Being the latest, let’s call it ‘Error Message Z’ for now, and then work our way backwards through the alphabet. 

What does ‘Error Message Z’ tell us about the functionality of our system? Well, to me it looks remarkably like ‘Error Message Y’, which we all got last year. Back then, it was another minister – Konrad Mizzi of the Labour government – who was criticised for appointing his own spouse in a public position of trust. Oddly enough, the people howling the loudest at the time were the Nationalist opposition, including Giovanna Debono… who saw nothing wrong with employing her own husband. What’s sauce for the Sai is not sauce for the Toni, it seems…

There is, however, a small difference. Giovanna Debono’s husband Anthony had been occupying the position of chairman of the Construction and Development Unit (which oversees all infrastructural work on Gozo) since 2004. And for an entire decade, nobody batted an eyelid at the fact that a minister’s husband had been appointed to a position which administers’ part of his own wife’s ministry budgetary allocation… as if it were their own family household budget they were spending, and not the national exchequer’s.

All this has been in the public domain since 2004. It was even reported at the time that Giovanna Debono had dismissed all questions regarding a very blatant conflict of interest. Where was the scandal then? Why does it erupt only now, when a very clear violation of the basic principles of common political decency (you do not give government jobs to your own immediate family, full-stop) has all along been visible to everybody?

Presumably, for the same reason that everyone just reboots their PC when it starts to malfunction. We all know the problem will not solve itself that way; yet it is more convenient to pretend that it will. And that is precisely what we have been collectively doing as a nation for decades now: pretending that the systemic rot will somehow right itself in the end… because of a change in government, because of the introduction of new legislation, because of the EU, because of this, because of that… when we along, we all know damn well that it never will.

The same pattern emerges from previous error messages, too. Take Error Message X: the one about the leaked dossier on private Swiss bank accounts. At least two former ministers have been named as holders of undeclared Swiss bank accounts: Michael Falzon and Ninu Zammit… with the result that PN leader Simon Busuttil insisted they resign from the party without further ado.

Yet these were not the first former Nationalist ministers found to have stowed away undeclared money in foreign accounts. In 2012 it transpired that former Energy Minister Austin Gatt likewise had omitted to inform parliament of a Swiss bank account of his own. So why was there no real scandal concerning Gatt’s account at the time? Is it because the PN was in government, and therefore didn’t take the issue as quite as seriously as it suddenly does now? 

Perhaps it is because the PN is under different leadership, and its leader genuinely wants to put all that behind the party once and for all. Perhaps. But either way, we all knew for certain that at least one former minister had failed to declare an asset, as required to by law. So all ‘Error Message X’ does is confirm an existing, widespread popular suspicion that this particular systemic failure was by no means limited to that single malfunctioning micro-chip alone. 

On the contrary, it is a virus that has infected the entire system for years, even if we only get isolated reports of it every now and again.

The same is true of the most popular scandal of the moment: ‘Error Message P (for Premier)’. The substance of this scandal is that government misused public funds to acquire a property – Café Premier in Valletta – when the lease owners had defaulted on rent for years. Government could have legally seized the property on the basis of breach of contract: yet not only did it choose to pay the defaulters 4.2 million out of tax-payer’s money instead… but it even halted court procedures aimed at recovering that property for free.

Again, this one points towards a glaring malfunction at the very heart of the central processing unit itself. But how is it different from Error Message Z, whereby tax-payer’s money was (allegedly) used to pay for freebies offered to a minister’s constituents in Gozo? Or Error message Y, which told us that our Energy Minister had used tax-payer’s money to provide his own wife with a salary? Or any of a million past error messages, which warned us time and again that both parties have constantly been dipping into the national coffers before every election, either to buy votes beforehand, or to accommodate lackeys afterwards?

No, make no mistake. These error messages may vary slightly in the detail, but what they all tell us remains essentially the same each time. It’s a ‘Total System Failure Due to Unrecoverable Fatal Error’ message, followed by a ‘No Solution Found’.

The only difference between that and the fatal error message you might occasionally get on your PC is that… well, you can always buy a new PC when your old one packs in. This system, on the other hand, is one we’re all just lumped with.