“If the institutions are terrorising you, don’t knock on doors, come to me”. This was Robert Abela rolling back the centuries to the Middle Ages when William of Aragon became Count of Malta, returning the islands to feudal rule.

Abela has appointed himself Count of Malta.  The citizens of these islands should no longer resort to legal means for their rights but should instead petition the Count to protect them from the evil institutions intent on terrorising them.

Abela is spiraling into a vortex. His claims get more absurd by the day.  In two years there has not been a single episode of bad governance, he proclaimed. Rosianne Cutajar is a member of parliament and deserves to be chairperson of the parliamentary health committee, he added. Checks and balances, to him, mean he has the duty to falsely accuse the judiciary and other institutions of bad intent. No, Bedingfield is not attacking the institutions, the PN is, Abela insisted.

When will somebody jolt him back to his senses? Malta is a European country, a member state of the European Union. This is the 21st century, not the 15th.

The foundations of our democracy are built on equal rights for all, guaranteed by the rule of law. Those institutions Abela accuses of terrorising citizens are there for good reason - to serve the people without fear or favour according to the law. They shouldn’t be answerable to Abela. Nor should they be subjected to abuse and intimidation either by him or his detestable whip, Glenn Bedingfield

Abela’s bizarre utterances are worthy of an autocratic despot who appoints himself omnipotent ruler. What is Abela proposing? That anybody with any grievance should simply go to him? What is he planning to do then? Decide about the legitimacy of that grievance and take summary action against the offending institution? And what would that summary action be? What does he have in store for those ‘terrorist’ institutions?

Abela is a threat to his own country and to himself. As all eyes are focused on the country, for its abysmal failure in relation to the rule of law, its prime minster encourages the nation to circumvent due process and resort to his merciful benevolence. Bypass the courts, the police, the tax department and go to Robert Abela is his message. If any proof were needed of how far the country is from shedding its greylisting, Abela’s pronouncements provide it.

Abela feels unassailable. He reduces the nation to begging him for favours - to pardon their taxes, to exempt them from property transfer tax, to defer their VAT payments, to write off penalties owed for financial irregularities, to expunge court decisions from the online database, to purge thousands of dodgy companies from the business registry, to intimidate the police and judiciary to desist from conducting house searches. Instead of defending and protecting the institutions, he incites citizens to denounce them to him personally so he can sort them out. That’s not a democracy - it’s a jungle.

Abela resorts to the language of autocracy.  More terrifying, he is on the path of autocratisation. In her book, Surviving Autocracy, Masha Gessen describes with piercing clarity how even in the United States, autocracy can silently creep in.  She describes three steps to autocracy - attempt, breakthrough and consolidation. Attempt is the stage at which the autocrat gains power through democratic election.  At this stage autocracy is still reversible through electoral means. 

Malta is past this stage and now faces autocratic breakthrough.  This is evident in Abela’s ominous actions. Breakthrough is when it’s no longer possible to reverse autocracy.  Gessen writes that at this stage the very structures of government have been transformed and can no longer protect themselves. These changes include packing the courts with judges loyal to the autocrat, weakening the courts in general, appointing an Attorney General who is loyal to the autocrat and will enforce the law selectively on his behalf, and changing the rules on the appointment of civil servants.

What allows the aspiring autocrat to transform the institutions of government is a supermajority in parliament. Abela ticks all the boxes.  In his case he not only enjoys a parliamentary supermajority but he has stuffed it with loyalists he hand-picked not those chosen by the people.  Besides he is practically guaranteed another super majority in the imminent election. If Abela is so brazen now, the country can expect worse once his streak of autocracy is reinforced by the resounding endorsement of another super majority all of his own.

Balint Magyar, a Hungarian sociologist, studied the backsliding of democracy in several Eastern and Central European states. “The autocrat does not de jure eliminate the separation of powers,” he wrote, “but connects the branches through his competences of appointment in a single vertical of vassalage.”  This is what Joseph Muscat achieved by appointing Lawrence Cutajar Police commissioner and Silvio Valletta his deputy, Marvin Gaerty as tax commissioner, Joseph Cuschieri as MFSA CEO, Dr Mario Vella Central bank governor, and Brigadier Jeffrey Curmi commander of the armed forces.

Intense international pressure and appalling scandals forced Abela to dump most of Muscat’s appointees. Now Abela fights to regain complete control by issuing threats and menacing the institutions.  By unleashing Bedingfield, Jason Micallef and Manuel Cuschieri, Abela ensures that the country is steered back onto that road to autocracy. Abela has abandoned all pretence of democratic credentials.  He is aggressively showing the country that any threat to the impunity of his former boss will be met with the most vicious Labour response. If the mere search of Muscat’s home triggered such a violent backlash what would his arrest or imprisonment do?

There are not many plausible ways to stop Abela. The institutions won’t save us.  They’ve been weakened and discredited and now endure Labour’s frontal attack. Yet the majority cheers as their hard fought rights are trampled on. Meanwhile Abela’s autocracy takes the form of kakistocracy - a government led by the least suitable, least qualified and most unscrupulous.