In just a few weeks, Robert Abela instructed his ministers to change two sets of laws that were inconvenient to his government. The announcements of the ‘reforms’ are masked as improvements in the public interest, but the only interest Abela is concerned with is his own.
Consider the prime minister’s reaction to an application – not the acceptance of it, mind you – for magistrates to collect evidence of alleged corruption in the allocation of public space in Gozo. Abela described the application (not what was alleged) as an “abuse of the system”. He described the process as justice by a pitchfork mob who wanted to (falsely) imprison an innocent person.
I’m not going here into the merits of the allegations except to underline that the suspect they indicated is a government minister and his wife, herself a government official. That doesn’t in and of itself prove their guilt. Pretty far from it. It does, however, show that these persons have political power that can be abused, and it is perfectly reasonable to investigate suspicions that they have done so.
The prime minister declared that the “abuse of the system” needed to be stopped and suggested that his government would abolish Jason Azzopardi’s right as a private citizen to ask magistrates to compile evidence and determine the existence of a crime. That right is part of our law as a safety valve, one of several that recognise that however well-intentioned institutions may be, corruption happens and must be fought.
Parenthesis. Whatever you may think of Azzopardi’s motives, he holds no office, has no political or legal power, and exercises no right or authority not vested in you as a resident of this country. So when Abela wants to remove a right that Azzopardi has exercised, he also removes your right to do what he did. Of course, you’re entitled not to care about the contraction of your rights. Idiots are a fact of democratic life.
If Abela was annoyed by Azzopardi’s complaint about his minister, he could have assured us that the allegations had already been investigated by the government’s internal audit unit, by the auditor general, by the police, by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life, by a magistrate, or by the Permanent Commission Against Corruption (PCAC).
He could have assured us that any or all had investigated and found and reported no wrongdoing.
If that happened, Azzopardi would be wasting magistrates’ time, and it would not take them too long to tell him so. The fact is that none of those institutional mechanisms worked in this case. That is why the right of individual petitions to magistrates exists.
That is why Abela wants to abolish it. The government’s internal audit unit’s agenda and work programme is overseen and depends on the pleasure of ministers. The police are hired and fired by ministers. The auditor general’s hard work is thwarted by the ministers’ failure to cooperate and by their enthusiastic indifference to his findings. The terms of reference of the Standards Commissioner are very narrow, and he is required to stop working the moment he finds a crime might have occurred.
I don’t know what the problem with the PCAC is precisely, but it’s been around three decades, and no one’s ever been convicted because of its work. Magistrates can only start an inquiry if the police ask them to, and the police won’t ask them to unless the minister who decides whether they get to keep their job is happy for them to do that.
This is the ideal environment for corrupt ministers to thrive; except for the right you, Azzopardi and I have to ask a magistrate to look into a crime nobody else wants to consider, which can lead to, for example, the prosecution of Joseph Muscat for allegedly taking bribes to give three public hospitals to crooks.
Ministers are now considering making it harder for you to learn about corruption- Manuel Delia
It’s not enough to dismantle the public’s right to get the institutions to do something about corruption. Because if the public knows about it, they will be angry. Ministers are now considering making it harder for you to learn about corruption.
Consider another threat of reform the government has recently made. They announced their intention to change libel laws – not to make it safer for journalists to report on government corruption, but to make it more dangerous for them to do so.
The threats have been vague, but the suggestion is to introduce ruinous penalties for defamation when disputed in the civil court and to criminalise defamation to get the police, handcuffs and prison involved when dealing with someone speaking out of turn. Ministers brand this as protecting “victims of the abuse of free speech” – for which read themselves – and dismiss objections by saying that no one who sticks to the truth needs to fear stricter libel laws.
That’s just not true. Truth in defamation cases is only a defence, not a prophylactic.
When journalists and activists are sued, the risk of losing and being fined exorbitant sums of money is a liability risk that conditions their existence even as proceedings are ongoing.
Try explaining to your bank manager that you’re confident of successfully defending massive lawsuits brought against you when they’re discussing your ability to pay your mortgage. And that’s to say nothing of being charged with a crime merely for reporting on a corrupt minister who has punished you by going to the police. It’s not like we haven’t seen these things happen to a journalist already before she was killed.
Connect these two threats. They want to make it harder for journalists to report corruption and remove the means available to activists to get corruption investigated, prosecuted and punished when nobody whose job it is does it. These changes are part of their programme to consolidate their power to steal with impunity. These two threats will become law in 2025.
In conversations I have or overhear, there is an increasing resignation to increased authoritarianism. There is an acceptance that the way of the world is for governments to be less accountable and for power to be captured by strong men like the chiefs of old rather than to be granted, temporarily and on condition of compliance with laws, to leaders who are held accountable by a public who elects them and watches their conduct closely.
Like the chiefs of old, these strong men are in it for themselves. The power they capture and retain is their means of self-enrichment. In place of public service in a democracy, power in an authoritarian regime is nothing better than theft.
Acceptance of this is how we deal with the dread of a worse future than our past. Happy New Year.