Every Maltese driver knows the phrase. Someone takes the bend too fast, ignores the signs, refuses to brake because braking would mean admitting the bend was there — and goes dritt ġol-ħajt. Straight into the wall. Nobody is surprised. Everybody saw it coming. That is rather the point.
Today Malta is 62 years independent. It is a good day to start a column about where we are driving.
Why opinion, and why now
Malta does not lack brave reporting. It has journalists who have been sued, smeared, followed and, in one case, killed for finding things out, and who keep finding things out anyway. The facts are, for the most part, out there. You can read about the hospitals deal, the spending, the planning bills and the appointments in half a dozen places before breakfast.
What there is too little of is people saying, plainly and under their own flag, what those facts mean — without the careful both-sidesing of a news report, and without the tribal loyalty of a party station. Somewhere between the reporting and the shouting there is room for argument. That is what this is.
The facts are out there. What there is too little of is people saying plainly what they mean.
What we stand for
Against corruption, whoever’s it is. Labour has governed since 2013 and has won four elections in a row, so most of what we write will be about Labour. That is what being in power means. But an opposition that cannot beat this record might also ask itself some hard questions, and when it deserves them, it will get them here too.
Facts first, linked. Every column ends with its sources. If we say a number, you can check it. If we cannot back something up, we do not print it — no matter how much we believe it.
Opinion, labelled as opinion. Everything on this site is argument. We will be angry sometimes. We will try never to be careless.
Presumption of innocence. People charged with crimes are innocent until a court says otherwise. We will criticise the decisions of the powerful — appointing a minister who is facing trial, for example — without pretending to be the court.
A right of reply. Anyone we write about can answer. Replies are published in full, and mistakes are corrected openly, at the top of the column, not buried at the bottom.
The wall is not inevitable
The thing about driving into a wall is that it only happens if nobody touches the brakes. Institutions are the brakes: the courts, the Auditor General, the Ombudsman, the Standards Commissioner, a free press, and a public that still bothers to be outraged. When they work, they are boring. When they stop working, you find out fast.
This column is one small foot on the brake. If you have something to say that fits, write for us. Għax jekk ma nitkellmux issa, meta?