On Friday 25 September, Prime Minister Robert Abela stood before the United Nations General Assembly and preached the virtue of trust. He described its erosion as the greatest challenge facing our world, then closed with a simple plea. "Let us dare to trust," he told the delegates gathered in New York.
The speech deserves a fair hearing before any criticism. The views he expressed on Ukraine and Gaza resonate with the majority of Maltese people. Russia's invasion drew his condemnation, and he demanded a full seat for Ukraine at any peace table. He also called for an end to settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank. Hardly any MPs on both sides of the House argue against any of that.
My quarrel lies elsewhere, in the test the Prime Minister set for himself. According to The Malta Independent, Abela drew a careful line between scepticism and suspicion. Questioning those who exercise power, he argued, forms an essential part of any democracy. Suspicion, by contrast, means assuming that others act against the common good. He called it "poison to any democratic society". It is a sound principle, and Malta deserves to see it applied at home.
Reflect on how the same man behaved toward a magistrate questioning those in power. In 2024, as speculation grew that the Vitals inquiry had been concluded, Abela warned that justice does not mean "political terrorism". Magistrate Gabriella Vella's inquiry then recommended charges against his predecessor, Joseph Muscat. Abela responded by casting her as part of a hostile "establishment", MaltaToday reported. Several NGOs condemned the attack on the judiciary, and MEP David Casa accused him of disrupting its work.
Listen, too, to the language he chose for his supporters that spring. The establishment, he told them, is cruel, and it neither forgives nor forgets. Those words assume critics act against the common good, which matches his own New York definition of suspicion. That episode showed no scepticism of power; it showed suspicion of those who check it.
Then came the reform of magisterial inquiries, which Parliament passed in April 2025 by 37 votes to 30. Until then, any citizen had the right to ask a magistrate directly to investigate a suspected crime. Today that citizen must first file a police report and then wait six months. Only after that does the Criminal Court decide whether to initiate an inquiry. The government published the Bill without prior consultation with key stakeholders. It also backdated the rules to pending requests that no magistrate had yet taken up. Abela insisted that the change prevents misuse rather than reducing access to justice. Yet the new hurdles fall hardest on the very citizens his speech praised, those who question power.
In New York, the Prime Minister also argued that institutions win back public confidence only by delivering results. Brussels measured Malta's own results in July, and the verdict made grim reading. Its 2026 Rule of Law Report found no progress on three of seven recommendations for Malta. It found limited progress on three and some progress on one. Malta still lacks safeguards for appointing the Chief Justice and adequate protection for journalists. Our country scored 49 out of 100 on the latest Corruption Perceptions Index. That score places Malta among six EU members below the halfway mark. Brussels also noted Malta's failure to build a record of final judgments in high-level corruption cases.
The speech acquires an irony at this stage that the drafters overlooked. Abela demanded a reformed Palestinian Authority built on transparency, accountability, and democratic legitimacy. Those are precisely the qualities Brussels keeps asking Castille to demonstrate. He also urged world leaders not to talk only with those who share their worldview. Repubblika complains that the government has refused, for years, any meaningful dialogue on reform. The Commission noted that the government still hesitates to have organised talks with civil society.
The Prime Minister told delegates that artificial intelligence should be governed by international rules based on international law. Malta's own record with international rules offers little comfort on that score. In 2019, GRECO, the Council of Europe's anti-corruption body, issued Malta with 23 recommendations. Malta has satisfactorily implemented only eight, according to the Liberties network. Eight more show no implementation whatsoever, seven years after Strasbourg set them.
For Gozitan readers, one passage of the speech struck uncomfortably close to home. Attacks on undersea cables, Abela said, pose "existential threats" for an island that depends on outside links. Gozo needed no foreign saboteur to learn that particular lesson this summer. On 28 August, two of the three 33kV feeders supplying the island failed at about 7:30pm. Victoria sat in darkness until 20 minutes past midnight. Earlier that month, cables at Xewkija and Comino melted in the heat. The National Audit Office has already identified chronic underinvestment in the national grid. Security, the Prime Minister told the Assembly, now runs along physical and digital lines. In Gozo, the physical line still hangs on three ageing feeders, two of which failed together.
Abela also invoked Arvid Pardo, who in 1967 called the seabed the "common heritage of mankind". Pardo's vision took 27 years to become the Law of the Sea, the Prime Minister recalled. Heritage at home progresses more quickly, but heads in the opposite direction. On 21 September 2025, Abela declared that Gozo should remain free from towers. Less than eleven weeks later, the Planning Authority approved a 13-storey block in Xlendi by nine votes to one.
None of these renders the speech wrong; it renders the speech incomplete. Trust, Abela told the world, depends on institutions that deliver visible results. Questioning power, he added, strengthens democracy rather than threatening it. Both claims hold as firmly in Victoria and Valletta as they do in Manhattan. A government earns trust when it welcomes the magistrate, the auditor and the awkward citizen. It squanders trust when it brands them an establishment and raises hurdles in their path. His address ended by asking the world to dare to trust. That invitation carries weight abroad only once Castille extends it to its own critics at home.