Any hopes for a quiet morning were dashed yesterday with an announcement that the Nationalist Party was going to hastily organise  a press conference before the Freedom Day activities.

Simon Busuttil announced that the government was set to press charges of criminal libel against Shadow Minister for Justice Jason Azzopardi, in connection with comments he had made about former Police Commissioner Peter Paul Zammit, where he said that Mr Zammit had leaked documents to a newspaper.

The Twitter universe then exploded as the government and the Prime Minister said that the government can never do such a thing and that Mr Zammit had filed a complaint personally. The Opposition leader tweeted back that it was evident that the government and Mr Zammit were in cahoots, because of Mr Zammit’s various government posts.

To set the story straight, this newsroom spoke with Mr Zammit directly and asked him whether he had in fact filed a criminal complaint against Dr Azzopardi. He confirmed that he had and would pursue the case in court.

There are a number of things that are inherently wrong with this situation. First of all, this is Malta – a democratic country and a member of the European Union. Why on earth are we one of the few nations left on earth that still enforce criminal libel laws?

Mr Zammit has every right to safeguard his reputation through the law courts, but this should be settled in the civil court, not the criminal court. Should this have been taken this far? No, we think not. This could have been settled in a wholly civilised manner through a civil sitting. Even in other countries that still have criminal libel laws, they are known as dead letter laws. Laws that although exist in writing, are not enforced.

In terms of politicians, this seems to have been the case (not for journalists, but more about that later) because the last politician to be charged under these laws was in 1979, when former PN Minister Michael Falzon wrote in the Democrat newspaper.

Politics is what it is, a war of words, a battle of wits and more often than not, a base for spin and more spin. But are we really living in a country where an opposition politician faces jail time because of comments made about a person who held a sensitive post and was handpicked for it by the government?

And why does it seem that the Prime Minister and other government staffers are egging Mr Zammit on? This is not the way things should be done in this day and age. Malta truly does seem to be sliding backwards.

After all the pomp and fanfare of removing old laws (granted some of them were ridiculous) that are no longer enforced (think carrier pigeons and coal measures), this law should have been among them.

There is simply no place for jail time for politicians and journalists – who are often threatened with criminal libel – in a supposedly modern and democratic country. Rather than get involved on a political level, the Prime Minister ought to put ‘progressive’ into practice and encourage Mr Zammit to withdraw the criminal complaint and pursue his claim in the civil courts. Then he should proceed to get hold of his Justice Minister and tell him to get rid of this law that is unbecoming to our society and democracy.