Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1499757
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 MAY 2023 10 OPINION There are only so many times you can hear the same old minister, repeating the same old, tired cliche, or empty catch-phrase, that we've already been hearing for decades anyway... IT'S been drawn to my atten- tion, over the past few days, that... I've been 'picking on' Clyde Caruana quite a lot in these articles, haven't I? And it's true, you know. Not, mind you, that 'picking on' is the expression I myself would use to describe it. After all, you can only realistically 'pick on' someone who is smaller, and weaker, than yourself – hence the saying: 'Pick on someone your own size!' - and, um... how can even I put this? He's the Fi- nance Minister, in case you've all forgotten; whereas I'm just... well, ME, at the end of the day. (Though I do admit that it's kind of flattering, really, that some people out there seem to think I'm the one who's actual- ly 'big' and 'strong' enough, to 'pick on' the other...) Nonetheless, it is certainly correct to say that I've been 'singling out' (there, much bet- ter!) Clyde Caruana far more often, in recent months, than any of his other colleagues in the Cabinet of Ministers. This morning, for instance, I went over all the articles I've writ- ten since the beginning of the year... and it turns out that around 'one in five' was either based on – or inspired by; or reacting to to, etc. – 'some- thing or other' that the Finance Minister had only just said, or done. And while that may indeed give rise to the (erroneous) perception that I might har- bour some kind of 'personal grudge' against Clyde Caruana, himself... I can assure you all that: a) I actually rather got on with Caruana, on the few occasions we've met (including when I interviewed him in October 2021), and; b) the real reason that I pay so much more attention to the Finance Minister, than to any other member of Robert Ab- ela's Cabinet – down to, and including, the Prime Minister himself – is that... well, Clyde Caruana just happens to be around the only one of that entire lot (with the possible exception of Energy Minister Miriam Dalli: and oh look, I 'pick on' her from time to time, too!) who ever 'says or does' anything at all, that is even remotely worth commenting about, in the first place! Let's face it, folks: how many articles do you think I can possibly write, about a Prime Minister who keeps telling us all to 'look forward to a beau- tiful future' – or some other, equally mindless platitude - while sailing off towards the Sicilian sunset, in his own, beautiful (and ultra-expensive) 'superyacht'? Or each time the Environment Minister unveils his latest 'Green Project' – usu- ally, the inauguration of a little rooftop garden, somewhere: complete with, at most, a cou- ple of potted plants, here and there – while the rest of coun- try's environment is repeatedly 'gang-raped', and 'pillaged', be- fore our very eyes...? It gets kind of repetitive after a while, you know. There are only so many times you can hear the same old minister, repeating the same old, tired cliche, or empty catch-phrase, that we've already been hearing for decades anyway... And yet, that is all we ever really hear from any of those other ministers, these days. In fact, you could almost define TVM's daily 8 o' clock news bulletin as: "an endless litany of 'which meaningless phrase was uttered' (or 'which utterly pointless project was inaugu- rated') by which Maltese politi- cian, this time". Nothing more, nothing less... Ah, but then someone like Clyde Caruana suddenly pops up, and... 'Ka-BOOOM!' You can almost rest assured that he will (very casually, as a rule) drop the equivalent a 'bomb- shell' on us all – if not a freak- ing 'nuclear warhead': as seems to be the latest case – almost each and every time he opens his mouth. So, um... yeah, actually. What else can I say? Under those circumstances, I find myself keeping a much closer eye on the words and actions of Mal- ta's current Finance Minister – whose occasional announce- ments would probably cause 'panic in the streets', in almost any other European country - than all those other Cabinet ministers, put together... Besides: there is another per- fectly valid reason for me to pay such close attention to 'what Clyde Caruana says', at the moment. It's not as though a great many people out there are doing the same thing, is it now? Take last week's bombshell, for instance. At the risk of re- peating my own article last Wednesday: Clyde Caruana has only just announced the intro- duction of a new, AI-powered 'tax collection' system, that sounds – to my own ears, at any rate – like something straight out of Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'. In fact, I can almost al- ready hear that ominous (yet strangely soothing) voice of Hal 9000, drifting across the Intercom: "I'm sorry, Dave: but I have just detected a mi- nor anomaly in your tax re- turns for this year. I'm afraid I will have to instantly freeze all your bank accounts, with immediate effect. Oh, and you yourself will be cancelled from the global banking network, in exactly 1:04.76 seconds: start- ing from... NOW. Goodbye!" [Fade out, to the tune of 'Dai- sy, Daisy', etc...] But, well... what was just my own, personal reaction, to what I consider to be yet an- other step towards Malta's in- evitable transition into a 'dys- topian nightmare'. Has Malta just been given a death sentence, without anyone even noticing? Raphael Vassallo