After Panama – two weights, two measures

Six months on since the Panama data dump, the long knives in Malta are still out, and endlessly sharpened, in an unrelenting quest to claim as trophies the scalps of Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri. It just goes to show how lucky this whole planet is that these islands have been given the dimensions of an outcrop the size of a pinhead.

Had we occupied an area similar to that of Sicily, with our present population size, we would have reduced the White House and the Kremlin to two gigantic bundles of nerves, each outdoing the other not to fall foul of the mood that happens to be taking us at the time.

So the planet can thank the hand of whoever moulded it to what it is now and Malta can thank its lucky stars that it has an enlightened electorate, and that at its moment of truth made its wisest choice in years in giving us a political leadership steeped in the most commendable principles that has driven us to levels never experienced before.

The Imriehel and the Townsquare projects are but puny aspirants to such lofty principles.

Not to betray these principles, the frontline, no-nonsense defender against those scalps becoming political trophies, has laid his fortunes on the line taking a storm of flak yet standing his ground with aplomb.

And one can see why, even if one doesn’t want to, if one reads on.

Among those 11.5 million documents that caused the planet to wobble, we are told that the Russian leader has some US$2 billion dollars stashed away for a Siberian polar day out of reach of his country’s taxman.

And hardly a Russian voice of dissent (out of some 140 million natives) has been raised.

Compare this with our Island’s 0.4 million, where a vociferous campaign intent on political lynching and the invasion of privacy of two of the island’s leading lights has for so long ebbed and flowed (mostly ebbed) in intensity all because Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were planning to put away for safe-keeping a meagre $1 million a year, all the fruit of hard labour well and truly justly earned.

Do you know what that means?

That means that Konrad and Keith each need 2,000 years to reach what Putin has siphoned off out of his country. So why all this fuss?

If it’s no skin off the nose for all those Russians, why should it be such a big deal with such venom for Konrad’s and Keith’s loose change? What gives you nihilists the right to hold these family men from humble yet proud working-class backgrounds to higher standards than the Russian people hold their leader, a leader who has almost never been a stranger to all the creature comforts?

What gives you Maltese nihilists the right to hold your government to standards higher than those the Russians hold theirs?

Two weights, two measures, like never before.

Joe Genevose
Birkirkara