Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1439469
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 DECEMBER 2021 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Year of the Vaccine… IT'S that time of year again, when newspapers and media outlets desperately scramble to identify a single issue that can somehow 'sum up' the events of the past 365-and-a-quarter days. As you'd expect, however: it isn't exactly easy. Not only must the chosen issue be impactful enough, to somehow influence (if not ac- tually shape) how we will all later look back on that particular year… … but it also has to have a certain 'oomph' to it, too; at least, enough to make for a punchy headline… And let's face it: a lot happened this year, that might conceivably qualify. (Note: my own choice is already right there, in the head- line; but bear with me while I get at least one other contender out of the way first.) For instance: 2021 seems to be ending on a particularly inauspi- cious note for Robert Abela's La- bour government. Having more or less started with (yet another) controversy surrounding Ro- sianne Cutajar: for which, the jun- ior minister resigned in disgrace last February…. … it will now end barely a week after another two high-profile resignations: first Labour MP Sil- vio Grech, over his involvement in a police investigation; then later – and, it must be said, much more tortuously – Education Minister Justyne Caruana: over what seems to be an entirely anal- ogous scandal to Cutajar's (also involving 'nepotism', 'unethical practices', 'damning Standards Commissioner reports', and all the rest.) Now: it would, of course, be ab- surd to propose any one of those resignations – or even all of them put together – as 'worthy con- tenders', in their own right. For one thing… how do you even con- dense all that into a single, snap- py phrase, anyway? The closest I could come up with was: 'Year of Standards in Public Life' (but let's face it: it's a little… yucky). A much more accurate – but hopelessly impractical – version would be: Year of the Maltese Politicians who suddenly awoke to the long-overdue realisation that: "Ooh, guess what? Maybe 'being a Member of Parliament' doesn't actually mean 'being God Almighty', after all. Maybe there really ARE consequences – and pretty serious ones, too! - to all our actions and decisions… etc., etc.' See what I mean? It's all perfect- ly true. For let's be honest: we are much more accustomed to the sight of ministers (and 'magisters') clinging to their positions by their fingernails… and leaving long scratch-marks behind them, as they are forcibly dragged away… But that is something Rosianne Cutajar never really did, this time round; and – much more perti- nently – it is something Justyne Caruana TRIED to do… but very evidently, failed. All the same, though… not ex- actly very 'punchy', is it? And besides: even if 'ministerial res- ignations' (to call the issue by its spectacularly boring name) really did strike a serious blow to Robert Abela's previously smug and com- placent stranglehold over political power, throughout the course of 2021… … it is hardly ever going to be ever looked back upon as the sin- gle, most pivotal issue of the entire year. Except, perhaps, in one sense only. For though we have occa- sionally seen political resignations before: and at much higher lev- els, too (For some reason, a cer- tain 'Muscat, Joseph' springs to mind)… … I don't recall that many pre- vious years when there were three of them in quick succession; and each one prompted by either a report by the Standards Commis- sioner (which, in any case, nev- er really existed before 2020….), or by an investigation involving some other authority, which is (or is supposed to be) independent of government… So you could, I suppose, argue that 2021 really was 'transfor- mational', in a sense. It might not have quite been as dramatic or earth-shattering as other re- cent events – and I'm coming to one example in just a sec – but there has undeniably been a 'sea- change' in this country, of sorts… regarding: a) how we perceive pol- iticians, and; b) how politicians perceive themselves. It might not have started in 2021, perhaps; but you could cer- tainly make the case that it came to full fruition this year. And yes, why not? Looking back, we might even one day even regard 2021 as something of a 'turning point'… a year in which independent au- thorities such as the Commission for Standards In Public Life (and everything they represent) final- ly did what certain 'talking trees' had once done, in certain fantasy novels… 'They awoke, and found that they were strong…' But… Nah! What was I even thinking? Too trite, too corny, too 'reach-for-the-bucket-under- your-seat'… and above all, WAY too early to tell if this trend is even going to last just a few minutes be- yond 2022 (when, as we all know, there will be an election)… No: much safer – and more accu- rate – to go with the obvious con- tender: 'Year of the Vaccine'. Not only did the roll-out itself hog all the headlines (both locally, and in- ternationally), on account of hav- ing reached a scarcely-even-plau- sible 98% of the population (which separately means the vaccine has, quite literally, 'injected' its own significance into almost every sin- gle one of us, individually…) …but while the vaccination is- sue remained at the very top of the national agenda, pretty much throughout 2021: I find it signif- icant that the same cannot really be said for either the Covid-19 pandemic itself… or even the more recent fears surrounding its variant, Omicron. Come to think of it, I only re- member two specific occasions this year, where the virus itself suddenly shot back up to number one concern. The first was a wave of national panic around Mid- March, when daily figures hit the 500-mark for the first time ever… and a second was an almost iden- tical wave just literally last week (when the same thing happened again: this time, with even higher numbers). In between, however, there was a period lasting from around mid- June, to early December, when neither Covid-19, nor any of its mutations, could even be de- scribed as a 'major public concern' at all. This can even be attested by our own, wildly contradictory reac- tions to all the health measures that were imposed on both those occasions. Last March, for instance, Chris Fearne and (especially) Robert Abela were on the receiving end of almost-universal criticism, over their woeful mishandling of that first post-Christmas surge. (And quite rightly, too: for they had both made the same tragic mis- take of pre-emptively declaring 'victory' over the pandemic… long before the vaccine was available; and when, in any case, nobody had ever bothered informing the virus itself that it had been… um… 'defeated'.) But that takes us all the way back to summer of 2020. The cause for criticism last March, on the other hand, was that gov- ernment was still reluctant to in- troduce any of the more 'drastic' measures demanded by the pub- lic: including the closure of bars and restaurants; the banning of all public mass-activities, and – not least - the mandatory wear- ing of masks. Fast-forward to December 2021, however, and… oh look. Fearne and Abela now find themselves under fire for the very opposite reason: i.e., because they are now