Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1347847
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 MARCH 2021 OPINION Raphael Vassallo It's a question of responsibility. And it has to be answered SO it seems that Robert Abela took considerable personal of- fence, at a couple of rather pointed questions he found himself facing at Wednesday's press conference. All together now: gee, how sad. And how unfair of those pesky independent journalists, to punc- ture his ego by reminding him of a few of his more recent failures as Prime Minister…. Because that's what those ques- tions were all about, weren't they? Let's see now: one of them was: 'Shouldn't you apologise for hav- ing predicted a 'return to normal- ity' by March (that is, today: when Malta's daily caseload comes in as the highest in Europe)?' And the other – which was ac- tually directed at Health Super- intendent Charmaine Gauci (but answered by Abela anyway) – was: 'shouldn't you consider resigning, to make way for someone who doesn't let political expedience get in the way of decisions affecting public health?' Admittedly, they both home in on slightly different details… but both are nonetheless underpinned by the same dominant theme. Responsibility. For it's not as though those questions were asked in a vacuum: last Wednes- day's press conference took place against the backdrop of a very specific context, after a whole year of our collective experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. And looking back over the last 12 months (especially from De- cember onwards)… let's just say things haven't exactly gone ac- cording to plan. We are now ex- periencing the third (and by far the worst) successive wave of this deadly disease; yet all along, the government has doggedly resist- ed introducing any of the stricter measures called for by all Malta's health specialists; and when it did eventually get forced into action, by a series of (incrementally larg- er) spikes… all its regulations fell conspicuously short of what the experts in the field have actually been demanding for ages. So when, in December, the Mal- ta College of Pathologists called for a temporary 'circuit-breaker' lockdown – i.e., a slightly shorter version of the strategy that proved so successful from March to June – government limited its restric- tions to only certain select indus- tries and professions: leaving the rest of Malta virtually unaffected. And when – three months later – the third wave inevitably ma- terialized (as had been predicted by virtually all medical experts)… government's response was to simply tweak the existing meas- ures a little: extending the ban from bars to restaurants; and in- creasing the already paltry fines to E100. Any particular reason, then, why an approach that has already clearly failed twice in a row, can suddenly be expected to succeed the third time round: when the numbers are much higher… and when the deadline for 'vaccination immunity' has now been pushed back to October, a full eight months away? Even without factoring in all the events and festivities lined up for this last stretch of the race – East- er, Sette Giugno, Mnarja, Santa Marija, the entire summer season, etc. – our chances of controlling this latest wave look about as bleak as…. well, the last time we tried and tested the same formula, with no success. There is, after all, a limit to how many times a strategy can fail… before we finally accept that it simply doesn't work. Even I just stopped there, then, the relevance of 'responsibili- ty' would already stick out like a sore thumb. Sorry, but what we're looking at is the text-book defini- tion of a complete fiasco, staring us right back in the face. So it is only natural that the Prime Minis- ter would to be called to account, sooner or later, over his abysmal handling of the crisis. Unfortunately, however, we can't really 'just stop there'. One of those questions also touched on Robert Abela's own, direct contri- bution to a national 'laissez-faire' culture, that has consistently un- dermined all the health service's efforts ever since last June. For let's face it: that idle boast of his – 'back to normality by March' - was hardly the first time that the Prime Minister has publicly minimized the dangers of this pandemic. Much as I hate to repeat it so often: this is, after all, the same Robert Abela who pooh-poohed the idea of a second (still less, third and fourth) wave as being 'only in the sea'…. who turned out to be yachting in Sicily, when the proverbial excrement hit the fan in August… who undermined the national enforcement drive, by suggesting that fines could be 'refunded'… and who even repeat- edly boasted that we were 'win- ning the war on COVID-19' (even when COVID-19 was – and still is – very evidently kicking our ass.) These things make a difference, you know: especially consider- ing that the success of a national health strategy depends, in no small part, on how seriously the broader population takes the threat in the first place. Yet even I, upon hearing that ill-fated 'Ides of March' predic- tion, found myself thinking… but surely, the Prime Minister would not take such a rash gamble with- out solid, reliable information to back it up. Who knows? Maybe, as prime minister, he is privy to data and statistics that are with- held from the ordinary man in the street. So perhaps there really is reason to suppose that things are likely to start getting better, from now on… Even the simple fact that I my- self entertained that possibility – albeit for around half a second – probably means that deep down, at some subconscious level, I may have lowered my guard a little. So I shudder to imagine how the same words would have been received by the vast multitudes out there, who seem to hang onto every crumb that falls from their beloved Prime Minister's table (you know: the sort of people who are busy trolling and harassing those two journalists, for doing their job, even as I write…) This brings me back to the orig- inal question: is there no correla- tion at all, between a Prime Min- ister who seems to consistently delight in trivializing the dangers of COVID-19 … and a steady rise in the number of cases, as people increasingly throw all caution to the wind? And yes: to be fair, I suppose we can all agree that the situation faced by Abela's government is unprecedented, to say the least; but to argue – as Abela did, at that press conference - that he should bear no responsibility at all, be- cause… um… OK, this is where things start getting a little weird. Instead of actually answering the question, Robert Abela regaled us with a long list of his own personal 'achievements' over the past year: the vouchers, the wage supple- ments… and, above all, his undy- ing commitment to 'ensure that Maltese businesses continued to operate as usual, while all the rest of Europe was at a standstill'. Now: leaving aside a few tee- nie-weenie details (the wage sup- plements, for instance, are subsi- dized by the EU)… the problem is right there, in Robert Abela's own answer. For over a year now, we have all become deeply sensitized to at least one problematic aspect of COVID-19: i.e., that it forces us to weigh public health against the interests of the economy (which, incidentally, explains why certain business sectors - especially in tourism – have been so deadest against restrictive measures from day one). There was, in brief, a need to somehow balance these two seemingly incompatible concerns. So all along, the fundamental question has always been: how do we save lives, while causing as little disruption to the economy as possible? Yet poring through that long list of Robert Abela's achievements… all of them, without exception, were focused on only one side of the equation: the economy. There was not a single detail (beyond, of course, measures that are clear- Robert Abela