Adrian Delia’s struggle to take control of his own party is coming at a cost to the country. With a dismembered Opposition, a group of bitter people are taking over the role they think the Opposition should be occupying.
It is the same people who hijacked the PN agenda in the run up to the last election, and have contributed heavily to its pathetic self-destruction and eventual downfall. Their behaviour is manifestly opposed to what they profess. When words and actions are diametrically opposed, we must look to the actions for the truth of what they believe in.
Listening to the message propagated by these pseudo social-leaders, one gets the impression that in Malta all hell broke loose in March 2013. It is as if Labour was elected to power on a mission to ruin our institutions and dismantle the rule of law. Therefore, one is to presume these had been working perfectly fine before that. The same conservative elements are using the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia to portray an image that Malta is no longer a country that upholds democratic principles, where there is no freedom of expression and human rights are being eroded. I suspect that those leading this battle for democracy and the reinstatement of the rule of law were fervent followers of her blog.
The PN MEPs joined in this patriotic cause of those who are declaring to be ‘ashamed to be Maltese’. They worked hard to have the European Parliament discuss a resolution which was full of mistakes. It was a motion that mixed up a number of unrelated points - the infamous murder, the Panama papers, human rights, corruption, money laundering, the Police Commissioner, the Attorney General, and the judiciary - into one big cocktail, meant to create confusion, with the aim of putting Malta in a bad light. They made sure the EPP MEPs regurgitated the same misinformed arguments over and over again. While this was happening it seemed they were actually enjoying themselves.
The orchestrated charade took a number of twists and turns, including the Sunday afternoon demonstrations. And during one of these interesting outings an insult competition levelled at the police took place in front of their own headquarters, having paper planes being thrown with threatening messages written on them; while police officers were present observing this farce in silence. Justice can be obstructed through various acts, including intimidation against law enforcement officers.
At the same time this was happening, the police were quietly and industriously working to solve this murder and possibly other similar cases. They are not lost in thought and rhetoric, but take action and know when to take it. Their performance is being lauded by many and rejected by the few because of their incoherent behaviours. The ongoing disruption will continue and more provocation is to be expected by the samepeople.
I seriously doubt these democracy champions want true justice. They have closed their eyes to what is at the heart of the rule of law, namely, justice and mercy, and the truth. Their bigger aim remains to tarnish the Government’s reputation at all costs. They have encouraged people to resent those who are not of the same political view or are collaborating with the Government. But I believe strongly that the majority of people understand where the genuineness is.
The Caruana Galizia family took it too far by procuring, from an ill-informed UK law firm, an advice that insults our judiciary by implying that the State was involved in the murder and on this basis no Maltese authority should be involved in the investigation. As a Maltese citizen, I reject these biased and immoral accusations. It is also a huge insult to the Maltese at large. Judge Silvio Meli was right to slam this legal advice when he said in court that it ‘undermined the rule of law by constituting an attack upon the independence and impartiality of the judiciary’.
The issue with this minority of elitists is that they believe that they always know better than your average commoner, and generally suffer from a superiority complex. While the commoners move rationally towards the truth, the few enlightened ones, in contrast, are increasingly drowning in their interior blindness. Closed in their arrogance, they believe they already have the light; so they do not open their hearts to the truth. At the height of their pride, they feel they are in position to judge others. They make every effort to deny the concrete evidence. They put in doubt the integrity of the truth seekers, and then reject the work of the authorities. Their closure to the truth makes them aggressive, and by exasperating their arguments they end up losing the plot.
It is a pity that a small minority is oblivious to this truth, and prefers to remain trapped in a vortex of negativity. Today, more than ever, I invite each and every one of us to translate our words of patriotism into action. We must unite as one nation, with humility and with patience.
The reality is that our country is moving forward. And this is happening at a faster pace than it ever did. Our institutions might not be perfect, but are functioning properly. The media, or anybody else for that matter, are free to express themselves as they so wish. The vast majority of the Maltese are optimist about their future, and that of their children.
Alex Muscat is a Labour MP