A month ago, Dutch MP, Pieter Omtzigt, the Council of Europe rapporteur on the investigation into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder, cast doubt on whether there can “ever be justice for Daphne”.
The unwarranted intervention by Omtzigt – who according to Wikipedia was “embroiled in a fake news report on the MH17 Malaysian Airways crash, where he paid for fake evidence in order to put the blame on Ukraine and exonerate Russia” – shed more heat than light on this extremely delicate issue. His contribution added hugely to the conspiracy industry that has emerged since Caruana Galizia’s tragic death by offering conjectures disguised as helpful suggestions – mostly uninformed.
The technical term for Omtzigt’s ill-judged comments is apophenia. Apophenia is the tendency to perceive mistaken connections between unrelated things to set off a plethora of conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory involves any situation that gives rise to a conviction that an illegal act has been carried out covertly between interested parties, usually those in government.
Conspiracy theories in Malta involve a concerted attack on the truth dressed up as concern for the truth. We had an excellent recent example of this in an article by the president of the allegedly “non-partisan” NGO, Repubblika, Vicki Ann Cremona, in which she implied, in so many words, that “60 per cent of all judges and magistrates sitting in judgment of us have a personal history that is intimately, actively and explicitly intertwined with the Labour Party” making this “a hostile takeover of our judiciary” by “the overwhelming weight and power of an authoritarian government”.
She even had the arrogance to infer that the promotion of Judge Aaron Bugeja – coming almost immediately after he had ruled, while still a magistrate, on the conclusions (ie the findings) of the Egrant inquiry – was due to his concluding unequivocally there was no evidence that the Prime Minister and his wife had been involved in a major corruption investigation. This repetition of a misplaced allegation by the COE Parliamentary Assembly is a disgraceful and unworthy slur by Cremona.
The conclusion of Magistrate Bugeja’s comprehensive investigation showed beyond doubt that Caruana Galizia’s accusation in her now notorious blog post of April 4, 2017 was completely unfounded. The then-magistrate Bugeja’s 15-month investigation upheld the values of an independent judiciary and truth in action, which Cremona seeks to undermine.
The testimonies of Caruana Galizia and Efimova were central to the magistrate’s findings. He found it difficult to reconcile the two women’s versions of events since they gave contrasting accounts which were “incompatible with each other, or completely disavowed by the evidence gathered”. The so-called ‘Declarations of Trust’, which were pivotal to the credibility of the whole case, had been forged.
Judge Bugeja’s charge-sheet consisted of a devastating list of fraud, forgery, perjury, defamation, libel, false evidence, outright lies, character assassination and attempting to pervert the course of justice.
Yet Cremona – who speaks for Repubblika, ostensibly a “campaigning organisation to fight for democracy and the rule of law” in Malta – bases her response to my article (which had focussed exclusively on entirely justified concerns about reports of a demoralised judiciary) on her sweeping and wrongful conclusion that “our judiciary is not free to decide”.
Like all conspiracy theories, the problem with Cremona’s extraordinary attack on 60 per cent of the judiciary (who – she shamelessly alleges – have been promoted “to secure the interests of the government and the individuals who run it”), is that it demonstrates there are elements of denial among people like her who, as soon as they have an opinion in politics, stick their heads firmly in the sand, become immune to evidence and assume that the untruths they propagate can tune out the noise of inconvenient facts.
Over the last two years, emotion has replaced reason and facts are now subordinate to feelings
Moreover, Cremona seems not to recognise the logical contortions that her position represents. For a supposedly intelligent professor with a disciplined academic mind, it appears to escape her that what she says is also just as derogatory of all the judges appointed during 25 years of PN administrations.
I would entirely respect her position if she were simply arguing that the Venice Commission’s recommendations on the selection of judges (already accepted by the government) should be introduced. They should be. But this is not what Cremona is saying, is it?
We all lose if confidence in the judiciary is undermined and destroyed. She is intelligent enough to know this. But she persists in her reckless attack on today’s judiciary motivated by a visceral and destructive reflex to hurt the institution.
It astounds me that for an organisation like Repubblika, formed to safeguard the rule of law in Malta, Cremona, its leader, plays fast and loose with the reputation of Malta’s judiciary, whose overall record of judicial independence over the last century has been generally above reproach. Judges have properly exercised the constitutional power which the rule of law requires that they should exercise – independent of the government and trained to be impartial in their judgments.
I understand that under a Nationalist government, Cremona – despite having no experience in diplomacy or international affairs – was appointed Malta’s ambassador to France and to Tunisia.
I simply hope for the sake of our country’s reputation that the reports she submitted to Lawrence Gonzi showed greater objectivity than she has demonstrated as the head of Repubblika.
Of course, Cremona is allowed her own opinions. But she is not entitled to her own facts. We can all choose to believe whatever we like (including that the earth is flat). But facts, evidence and truth exist independently of whether or not people believe them. Like conspiracy theorists the world over, she has ended up believing what she wants to believe, even if it happens not to be true.
Increasingly, over the last two years, emotion has replaced reason and facts are now subordinate to feelings. Instant comment is preferred to measured responses. Instead of digesting unwelcome information about the morale of the judiciary, Cremona spits it back in disgust.
Tangible proof of wrongdoing, not politics, is one of the basic precepts of the rule of law. Unsubstantiated allegations dressed up as evidence of the collapse of the rule of law are a travesty motivated by self-serving political, not objective criteria.
Cremona appears to be suffering from a case of apophenia and self-delusion – not a good place to be in for somebody leading an organisation fighting for the rule of law.