The Opposition released a statement yesterday saying that the government’s attitude in the House Business Committee (that’s the committee which deals with parliamentary business) is a “threat to democracy”.
The government’s attitude? And only in the House Business Committee? It’s the government itself that is now a threat to democracy, and this in every sphere in which it is involved, which in Malta means almost everything except the bathroom. If you’re the son of a furniture magnate and long-time Labour family, even your kitchen isn’t safe.
The incoming Labour government deliberately set about weakening and undermining the institutions that are meant to safeguard democracy, ensure the rule of law, protect individuals from abuse and make sure that government corruption is checked. It did this to a set plan – its roadmap – starting on 10 March 2013 when all the permanent secretaries in government ministries were swept out of the way and a former General Workers Union section boss, Mario Cutajar, brought in from the outside and made head honcho in the public service.
The government’s scorched-earth tactics continued, installing stooges, party apparatchiks, cronies and stool pigeons in all crucial government departments and state authorities. They fixed things to have informers everywhere, and people in charge who would do their bidding even if it meant ignoring or violating the law. The abuse has been serious, as with the succession of police commissioners who have been chosen for no reason other than that they will not investigate anybody connected to the government, starting with John Dalli and ending – so far, now – with Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and possibly even the Prime Minister himself.
All institutions have been weakened to the point where they cannot function properly. The army and the police force have been debilitated. The Attorney-General – always a conflict-of-interest position because he is both state counsel and state prosecutor – has been reduced to somebody who shares a box at the Manoel Theatre with the Minister for Justice. The Chief Justice comes across as terribly keen to please Labour politicians and then goes ballistic when this accusation is made against him, suggesting that it is true. He was, in fact, nominated – as was easily foreseen – by this government for the post of judge in the European Court of Justice. Yet he flunked it – another choice of an inept candidate by Muscat’s government – and had to scurry back home where he is still Chief Justice.
And then, of course, we had that series of corrupt and abusive appointments to the bench, in both the upper and lower courts, culminating in the offensive appointment as a magistrate of the inept and inexperienced daughter of the Speaker of the House, whose appointment was itself the fruit of corrupt thinking and abusive cronyism.
Meanwhile, the silence, collusion and complacency of critics or would-be difficult people has been bought systematically, either by putting them on the payroll in actual jobs or by retaining their unspecified and unnecessary services at a considerable annual fee, which is then bolstered by further contracts from government departments, ministries and state authorities. Others are bought through advertising and programmes on television, and the cheaper ones are bought with invitations to parties and fashion shows at Girgenti Palace and now, Villa Francia.
The same tactic that is used to buy the collusion and complacency of difficult people is deployed on difficult situations. People objecting to the sale of citizenship? Why, let them sell it too. Suddenly, they are all jumping on the bandwagon and getting their commission, filling the electoral roll with shady people from all over the globe, and the Nationalist Party finds itself with a problem. Though it knows beyond doubt that it should pledge to scrap the scheme, because that is what people want and because it is doing Malta so very much damage, it will meet resistance from those who are delighted to be raking it in, scouring the globe for people who want to buy a European Union passport, taking commissions on citizenship applicants, and leasing flats and houses, as addresses of convenience, to people who will never stay in them. If the Nationalist Party pledges to scrap the sale of Maltese citizenship, it is going to find itself up against a vast sea-wall of people – from estate agents to consultants – who prefer money to democracy and the rule of law, and who are more than happy to cooperate with a corrupt government as long as it leaves them enough money to store up for the afterlife.
I have no doubt that given the choice between voting for Muscat so that they can continue to sell EU passports, and voting for Busuttil so that Malta can return to democracy, normality and the rule of law, most of those people – even the “Nationalists” – will choose the former. At root, Maltese people are crooks. They’re either big crooks, or they’re small-time crooks. But crookery is a historic tradition.
The argument that seeks to justify this behaviour – that the sale of citizenship is now the law, so we might as well sell it because it’s legal – is completely amoral and revolting. It is also logically fallacious. The fact that something is legal does not make it right or acceptable, and a change in the law should not mean a change in principles or attitude. As I had occasion to remark to a couple of people a few days ago, the objections to the sale of Maltese citizenship, which were put up before it became legal, were objections made independent of its legality. It therefore follows that the law changes nothing. It only changes the attitude of those who objected because only Henley & Partners were allowed to sell, and then changed their minds when the law allowed them to sell too.
Meanwhile, those who cannot (will not) be bought are tackled in other ways. As invariably happens with fascist systems of government, the initial euphoria and talk of freedom and The People dissolves under pressure and the rapid and precipitous slide into totalitarianism begins. The first sign of this is overtly abusive assaults on the government’s critics, first singling out individuals in an attempt at isolating them and harrying them, using all the media and other instruments at their disposal (which is exactly what they do to me, for instance). Then, when the pressure intensifies and popular criticism grows so that it is not just a matter of individuals who can be singled out and targeted, they begin hitting out at entire newspapers, as they are doing now with this newspaper, its sister daily, the Times of Malta and The Sunday Times. Now that the man the Prime Minister’s chief of staff bought and shared offshore companies with is no longer in charge of those two newspapers, the government is showing massive signs of panic and has responded to its perceived loss of control there by lashing out with libel suits and hysterical, fascist-sounding statements released abusively by the Department of Information at the Office of the Prime Minister. The angry telephone calls, letters from lawyers, threats of libel suits, actual libel suits and other attempts at intimidation have not stopped at this newspaper, either. And yesterday, the government even threatened legal action against the Opposition in an attempt at cowing it into silence – this when the leader of the government was strolling through Rome with his malicious aide Glenn Bedingfield.
The situation is grave, and our only consolation in 2016 is that they won’t be setting fire to newspaper buildings and printing presses this time, or sending out thugs and ministers’ chauffeurs to drive around shooting at Opposition party clubs with submachine guns and killing people. But you know that things are really bad when you begin hearing people consoling themselves and reassuring others with those extreme thoughts. “At least they’re not setting fire to buildings and shooting at us.” Well, so that’s all right then. They’re just setting up a web of offshore companies and looting the country while attacking the press and their critics.
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