The events that led to the recent departure of our Prime Minister Joseph Muscat could teach one a few lessons – lessons that are essential for the whole population if the same mistakes are not to be repeated. There was an underlying current of thought running through the population at large which seemed to accept that, in politics, it was alright if you were a bit corrupt. One individual even told me that the government cannot work unless there is a little bit of corruption.
Events have led everyone to realise now how mistaken they all were. A little bit of corruption goes down the slippery slope to more serious corruption and finally to murder! This lie – that a little bit of corruption is good for the government and that it does not matter if the members of a government are corrupt as long as we have food on our plates – is a serious bending of the moral and ethical order. And it has dire consequences because, at the height of the scandal, many people began to feel the economic pinch as the economy started to perform badly due to events and therefore it results that corruption also badly affects the economy and the food on one’s plate.
Joseph Muscat has gone, but now one realises – more than ever – the extent of the lie regarding the situation we were all in. The ex-PM was trying hard to create a narrative whereby he came out as a hero for catching those who commissioned the murderers of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The reality is that the situation convinces people now more than ever that he was ‘in’ on the situation for a long time. He must have known for some time who the murder’s commissioners were but was tempted to keep mum and played for time, until events took a different turn and started to get out of hand.
If there was anything, however, to show that he had made the wrong move, it was the fact that he kept defending Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri well after the Panama Papers story spilled out and well after they both admitted to owning the accounts. No self-respecting Prime Minister would have retained those two after this event, but instead he chose to defend them to the hilt – when the facts showed otherwise – and he adamantly refused to fire them. I had always said that, because of his behaviour, Joseph Muscat was either involved with them or afraid of them due to something they knew about him, otherwise it made no sense to continue defending them!
Something else that the Maltese need to learn is to stop making demi-gods of their politicians. There is this tendency to exult a politician to icon level and then everything this politician does is good. The concept of what is objectively right and wrong is lost and people just jump on the band-wagon, rubbishing anyone who dares to question their idol. This happens to the stage where even well-educated people keep jettisoning their very reason to keep defending something essentially indefensible, even when the facts are staring them in the face. Everyone starts to say that the emperor is dressed even when the facts are showing that he is, in fact, stark naked. This is the irony of human weakness in the face of manifest untruth and it is also brought about by weakness of character and greed.
There is now a new Prime Minister who has been harping on about continuity: continuity for the Labour supporters who are having a good day that is, but as for the rest of the population whose day is not so bright, nobody wants continuity but a complete break from what went on before! It is essential, now more than ever, that the new government tackles the lack of rule-of-law issues that are so evident amongst us. Rather than ‘business as usual’ for the country, what we need now more than ever is a coming together of the political forces to ensure that what happened in the recent past, will never happen again.
What we now need in the country, is a show of mutual respect of all the political forces and co-operation to pass legislation – together with the Opposition – in order to make our country a better place in which to live. The 15 suggestions put forward by the PN in the middle of the crisis to overcome potential mismanagement require serious thought and consideration and there are several suggestions that the government would do well to give serious thought to implementing rather than trying to paper over the cracks on its own.
The country is now fed up and will not settle for anything less than proper and adequate leadership. We must put an end to all this legal filibustering and political misguided pride that often leads the country astray. Serious government and the re-routing of our economy require no less. If the government takes the antagonistic ‘business as usual’ approach it is out of synch with what the man in the street is feeling. If it tries to pour scorn on serious efforts for reform and tries to show how good it is at doing things on its own, it will come off as arrogant and will inevitably fail.
The attitude that the new incumbent has taken on – that ‘we’ are in government and that ‘we’ alone will dictate change – smacks of a political arrogance that does not do the Labour Party, or the Prime Minister, any good.
The last time it went up that path we all know where we ended up and what we need now is a ‘mea culpa’, and an act of contrition. These are not normal times – they are times where we all have to rise above the heads of the average. The PM’s new regulations proposed to nominate the new Police Commissioner, for one, fall very short of what was expected of him because, with this measure, nothing much has changed. Instead, he is rather playing about where radical reform is really required. If the government fails to do this, and goes about its usual political rhetoric, then it has understood nothing and will simply have failed us all once again.
If the party in government is serious about reform, then it must act at once. It must establish a round-table conference with all the political stake-holders involved in order to do what needs to be done quickly and effectively. The inter-ministerial committee for good governance is not enough; we need to go further to establish radical change in The Constitution where it matters – especially in fields that are smarting. This is not a time to do things alone: it is a time to do things together!
Dr Michael Asciak MD, M.Phil, PhD
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