The Council of Europe’s rapporteur on the state of our rule of law and the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia has most kindly offered, through a conversation with this newspaper yesterday, to redraft his most damning report that was approved by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights by an overwhelming majority.

That is, if the Maltese government starts taking some serious steps to realistically implement the recommendations of the Venice Commission and if it undertakes a public inquiry into the assassination of the journalist.

We highly recommend that these two steps are taken, not just to avoid incurring the wrath of the Council of Europe, but because, at the end of the day, they are the right things to do.

But the government has instead decided to dig in its heels against the Council of Europe, taking particular aim at its rapporteur, Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt, deeming his report to have been ‘riddled with inaccurate and gratuitous statements exposing a very biased agenda which is not based on the true picture of the matter’.

The funny thing is that this is the exact same argument the government had made, most inappropriately through MP Manuel Mallia, when Omtzigt was first appointed and when it saw the rapporteur’s rather broad terms of reference. 

The government was also, quite apparently, alarmed over the MPs unyielding stance in favour of the rule of law.

The Maltese government yesterday stressed that process regarding the motion originally presented in the Parliamentary Assembly by Omtzigt is still ongoing and is not for public consumption. The government also insisted that it and its MPs respect the Council of Europe’s rules of procedure on the confidentiality of processes and meetings.

Well, let’s just say that the government respects such confidentiality when it suits its purpose and we would also speculate that if the report had sung the opposite tune it could very well have been leaked to other quarters.

Let us also make it perfectly clear that while this newspaper had contacted Omtzigt yesterday about the report, the rapporteur would not betray any confidence when probed, and would not even say by how much of a majority his report was passed by the Committee, only that it was a ‘large’ majority.

The government points to how he report was leaked to this newspaper and to another section of the press last week before the MEP election, claiming that the timing was dubious, having come right before the election.

While we can assure all readers that the draft report did not come to us from the rapporteur, we can also say that the timing was what it was, and it was prepared just in time for Committee MPs to have a good read of it before yesterday’s meeting where a vote was to be taken.  Would he government have preferred if he people voting on the report were to have been given just a few hours in  which to skim it, as the government has done to the opposition time and time again.  The Council of Europe does things differently, the rule are followed to the letter and

The leak, the government lashed out yesterday ‘was intended to create a hostile and unreceptive environment towards Malta and to pre-empt any effort to have the report discussed in any spirit of objectivity.  In fact, the report itself is a reflection of deep animosity against Malta.’

That is certainly not the case and it is unfathomable that the government keeps comparing criticism against it and its actions as criticisms against Malta.  No matter how many elections one party or another may win, no government is Malta.  The people are Malta, but unfortunately they don’t truly appreciate that, or what this government has pulled off for the benefit of the chosen few in their name.

The government keeps objecting to Omtzigt having been appointed as rapporteur but then again, the government has objected to every critical report levelled against it from every international institution with which it has crossed swords.

But the government argues that international institutions ‘cannot just pass one-sided reports against a country by sheer force of numbers’.  But that is precisely why the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, whose plenary session will vote on the report next month, is comprised, most proportionately, of MPs from every member state. In a way, it is the very essence of democracy.

The government takes issue with Omtzigt because he had previously taken Malta and its rule of law to task by having unsuccessfully written to the CoE’s Committee of Ministers to take action against Malta for its violations of the rule of law.  That, in our view, is a good thing.  Would the government have preferred a spineless, pencil pushing MP?  Probably.

The government also takes the rapporteur to task over an incident when, it says, ‘he helped a fake witness to the MH17 disaster over Ukraine infiltrate a briefing attended by victims’ relatives.’

It would be unfair to pass judgement on this incident without speaking to the rapporteur about it but suffice it to say that, in the Maltese government’s own words, ‘He himself had admitted to have behaved inappropriately on the matter.’

If that is true, then at least the MP has been man enough to own up to an error in judgement, which is more than we could say for many a politician in Malta.

This has been a classic exercise in shooting the messenger and ignoring the message.  Instead of that, the government needs to take the criticism for what it is, take immediate action, and take it seriously, not because the Council of Europe or Pieter Omtzigt is telling it to do so, but because it owes it the country.