So Patrick Vella did the decent thing and pleaded guilty, sparing the nation, himself and most of all his family from a sordid procession of witnesses and their sleazy testimony. What could possibly have been gained by dragging all of that up again? Far, far better to muster as much dignity as possible and to go down with a guilty plea and an apology to society, than to argue your case in the dock like the worst of common criminals. It was only the show of cowardice at the prospect of being imprisoned with men he had sent there that tainted it all.
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An editorial in another newspaper asked how it might be that a judge in the Appeals Court could be thought even approachable for bribery. You don’t just walk up to a judge and take your chances, it argued. The answer to that one is obvious: corruptors, real and potential, don’t choose their prey randomly because there’s too much at stake. I don’t think anyone in his right mind would ever contemplate walking up to Judge Galea Debono or to Judge De Gaetano, to Judge Micallef, Judge Felice or even Judge Caruana Demajo who took on this case – to name just the few who spring immediately to mind – and try to tempt them with Lm10,000. They know they would find themselves facing police interrogation within minutes. That’s why it’s so important that the background, character and way of life of those considered for this crucially important post be carefully scrutinised.
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Corrupters first ascertain who is corruptible. The first thing they look for is a cavalier attitude towards ethics and morality, assuming – quite accurately in most cases – that if a person has no sense of ethics or morality in his private life, then he or she will have no sense of ethics or morality in his public life or business life, either. And by lack of morality in your private life, I do not mean leaving your wife for somebody else, but lying and cheating, trampling over the lives and dignity of others, and inhabiting a moral grey area where you can always find reasons to justify anything you’re doing as long as it suits you to do so. I don’t think Patrick Vella falls into this category at all. I think he falls into another one altogether.
If corrupters can’t pick up any signals that their target sees ethical behaviour as a minor inconvenience which is there to hamper the lives only of others, then they look for other signs of weakness of character, seek out information on how the target lives, and most of all, they pick up immediately on avarice. They know that what makes a person most vulnerable to corruption is the need or the desire to attain or sustain a lifestyle that is way beyond the means of his or her legal income. Men are even more vulnerable to this when their wives have been given to understand that they have more money than they really do, and they can’t face telling them the truth. I found it very telling that when Dr Vella was first interrogated by the police, he told them that he had spent part of the bribe-money on costly jewellery for his wife. That money, which in the end came at such an extraordinarily high price, went not on electricity bills, school fees, or food, but on gifts for a beautiful second wife a generation younger than he is. Her detractors, the Eve-hating brigade who like to think that “she made him do it”, don’t know what they’re on about. She was a nice wide-eyed girl – one of the nicer girls in my class at school, as it happens – who married young to a much, much older man who swept her off her feet and treated her like a princess. Women love nothing better than a man who looks after them, and sometimes they love it so much that they are naïve or unquestioning about where the money comes from.
No woman ever made any man do anything, unless that man is of sub-normal intelligence and completely in her power. Men have free will. The mistake some husbands make is not to understand that their wife would rather know the truth and live in reduced circumstances but with peace of mind than unwittingly live a lie only to have a guillotine come down on her life and her household. Only a very bad or very stupid woman would knowingly expose her children to the risk of enduring what Mrs Vella’s children are going through now, and Mrs Vella is neither of those things.
Men are a different matter because in general – whether they are bad or good, clever or stupid - when they are carried away they tend not to think about what it might mean to their children.
Of course Mrs Vella sobbed in court. I can only imagine her distress and her bewilderment, her worry about her children and even, at the end of the day, her concern for her jailed husband. Her only mistake was in not asking where the money came from, but then many Maltese women see their husband’s income as something that materialises mysteriously. Lots of women reading this will have no idea how much their husband earns, where he gets it from, or even whether he is in debt. If wives asked more questions and had more information, than fewer of them would sign away the roof over their head when they are told that it is ‘just a signature to get a loan’, and then wake up one morning to read a notice in the newspaper which tells them that the home in which they are having tea is up for auction because the bank has foreclosed.
Fear of being unable to keep up the appearance of comfort or affluence – whether to society in general or more importantly to a wife or children who don’t know the truth as to where the money is coming from – has been known to drive men into the jaws of loan sharks. If those men, and sometimes women – though this is rare because women are rarely in influential posts – are in a position to trade in influence and to take bribes, then they will do this instead of going to a usurer, not just because it is safer, but because there is no interest to be repaid. The money is given, not lent.
I don’t think Patrick Vella was, or is, a bad man, just a dreadfully weak one. His remorse is plainly not something that has been conjured up to impress the judge. He seems painfully aware of the utter shame he has brought on the Appeals Court and on himself, and of the pain and embarrassment he has caused his family, who love him. His sister, the very decent widow of a much-respected doctor, was distraught as she spoke in court about the brother she so clearly loves and for whose plight she feels deeply. The only point she missed, and in I think in her situation many of us would be blind to it too, is that all he is going through now he has brought upon himself. It is not he who is the victim, but those he has brought down with him. Yes, society has judged him and deemed itself shocked, but we are speaking here of an Appeals Court judge who took a sum of money to reduce the sentence of one of Malta’s most awful drug traffickers, who made his money by selling highly illegal substances that ruin lives.
I have no doubt that throughout the past four years Dr Vella has been deeply grateful that his parents are not around to see what is happening. These are not the signs of a bad man. Bad men do not have consciences, or they do not let their consciences trouble them. Judge Caruana Demajo showed deep insight into the situation when he said that jail will be a form of expiation for Dr Vella - the contemporary equivalent of making reparation for one’s sins by wearing a hair shirt and whipping oneself five times a day, while living in a monastery on a diet of stale bread and water. People with consciences need to walk that barefoot mile over broken glass; it’s people without consciences who don’t.
* * *
A monk took the witness stand to plead for clemency for this disgraced man. Some holy men have a way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, pleading for the wrong people. If a monk is going to plead on behalf of somebody who is in the dock facing a jail sentence, then let him plead for the young man who has been raised in the gutter by an alcoholic mother with a usury problem, forced to steal to feed himself and his siblings, until all he knows is a life of crime. It’s the people who were damned from birth who deserve the pity, clemency and attention of monks, and not those who were privileged and risked it all because of avarice.
* * *
The defence lawyers asked for a suspended sentence, and I think they did so in all seriousness, rather than in the spirit of ‘there’s no harm in asking’. These lawyers need to take stock and get the proper perspective on what it was they were dealing with. Lawyers are the last people on earth who should be taking a light view (oh, a suspended sentence is enough) of Dr Vella’s crime, for in doing so they only compound the negative public perception of the law courts.
* * *
When people are truly ashamed, regretful and prepared to pay their dues to society, then we should find it in ourselves to forgive them. It’s over now. Patrick Vella’s chapter is closed. He may never work again. His wife must earn the money to support her family and should not be shunned or thwarted in her attempts at doing so. It’s when people in this situation are defiant and arrogant, when they seek to minimise the wrong they have done or to deny it, when they give lip service to remorse and regret without really feeling it, that they are intolerable and cannot be forgiven or given the time of day. Let’s hope to be spared that kind of attitude.