What next?

We zoom past crisis after crisis, never actually having time to take it in or wait for a resolution before we are suddenly whisked off, willy nilly, to the next mishap.

We have the multiple strops that Franco Debono throws from time to time. Then there is the St Philip's saga, which was somewhat eclipsed by the John Dalli cyclone. At the same time we are 'entertained' with the drama at the Delimara power station and our resulting energy crisis, while taking in the news of the multiple bus crash in Floriana.

Were I of a superstitious inclination, I would start to think that someone has put the evil eye on the current administration.

The question that obviously springs to mind is - what next? Will the infamous Boiler 7 at the Marsa Power Station give up the ghost, leading to nationwide power outages for days on end? Will Franco Debono resign from the Nationalist Party for the umpteenth time, and declare that he is an independent candidate with no allegiance to the party in government, thus toppling the entire house of cards?

Seriously. What's next?

Kangaroo Court

Am I the only one who is seriously concerned about the fact that our politicians are allowing Johnny Public to dictate how the law should be interpreted and enforced?

The case of the mother who was sent to prison and subsequently pardoned for not ensuring that her son spent sufficient time with his father is a perfect case in point.

When I read about the case for the first time my reaction was that it was a desperately sad situation and my heart went out to the young man in question. It must be terrible to have your parents constantly at loggerheads, fighting out their battles in court instead of communicating like reasonable human beings.

I did not immediately jump to the conclusion that the Maltese Judiciary are off their rocker when they sentenced the woman to prison - clearly they knew the details of the case, while the public did not. As a mother myself, I am very much aware of how easy it would be to influence a child against anyone, so the case did not appear straightforward to me at all.

However just as in the case of Star the dog, the story caught the public's imagination and the resulting outcry was deafening. Nobody seemed to care about the father's side of the story. The general consensus was that a mother is by her very nature 'good' and that she always puts the wellbeing of her children first.

Now I believe that most mothers do their best for their children - however I also know that the bitterness of a failed marriage and a broken heart has led many a woman to do and say things that they would find incomprehensible and unacceptable when clear-minded and rational.

I myself know a number of mothers who are so angry at their ex-partner that they use their children as pawns. I also know of many mothers who cry in front of their children after a marital breakup, making the children feel guilty for loving their father and wanting to be with him. I am obviously not implying that this is what happened in the case of the mother who received a presidential pardon, because I do not know the woman and I have no idea what went on in her household. However these situations can and do happen more frequently than people would like to think, so the public should not have jumped to the conclusion that the mother was right and the father was wrong.

In my opinion it is commendable that this father wanted to spend more time with his son. We should applaud his determination and support him, not accuse him of being a monster.

What was most worrying to me in the whole debacle was not the story that unfolded in court, but the fact that our politicians and indeed our president buckled under the weight of public opinion and pardoned the woman.

Was she pardoned because our courts made a mistake or was it because of the hue and cry that arose on the comment boards?

If the presidential pardon was given in order to score brownie points with the public then we have set a very dangerous precedent. Every time someone loses a case and gets sent to prison, they will pay a PR firm to stir up public opinion in their favour, in order to put pressure on the President to pardon them.

I don't know about you, but I would like to think that our judiciary are doing their job to the best of their abilities, and that they do not spend hours on end listening to witnesses and compiling evidence just to then sentence people who are totally innocent to jail.

Our politicians and president should have shown more faith in our judicial system and not undermined it in a totally arbitrary fashion.