Listening to the exchanges during the hearing of the Attorney General’s application for the suspension of the Auditor General is like eavesdropping on teenagers bickering in the schoolyard over some trivial matter.
One would expect teenagers to refrain from using such demeaning language about one another, and surely they wouldn’t waste time meticulously monitoring, recording, and filing posts and publications.
There is a silver lining with teenagers, though; we can hope that they will mature and leave such behaviours behind. But what can we expect in this case?
The most tragic aspect is that the court has to endure all this, sift through thousands of pages, and decide: Is the Auditor General’s behaviour truly inappropriate? Is he responsible for the words and actions of his adult son and sister? Did he or did he not call the Attorney General corrupt?
Perhaps the court should also inquire about the number of working hours wasted by the Attorney General’s office monitoring online posts and add that to the time lost in this farce (one cannot quantify grey matter).
Lately, though, everything seems like a parody (or perhaps we view it as such to avoid seeing it as a tragedy). Reading the monk’s testimony feels like watching a crime thriller: intrigue, fraud, surveillance, threats, extortion, violence, sex, and money, lots of money. And the pièce de résistance—the method of delivering the cash. In a drugstore bag, no less, with the code phrase, “Your blessing, Master, here are your medicines” (a reference to the Saint Habakkuk scandal). Netflix screenwriters take note; reality surpasses fiction. The setting with priests, vestments, crosses, and monasteries would outshine any Papakaliatis production.
Our only solace (if it can be called that) lies in the exchanges between Biden and Trump during that infamous debate. “You’re the sucker, you’re the loser,” “You’re a crybaby,” “You have the morals of an alley cat,” “You had sex with a porn star while your wife was pregnant,” “He’s become a Palestinian” (however that is interpreted in an already sick mind).
From our local squabbles to the leaders of the free world, past, present, and future, the image projected is nothing short of despairing.