So, Joseph Muscat insists that he has indeed apologised to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s family. Let’s leave that to her family to decide. The apology he owes the nation is something else.
To see why it’s needed – if it isn’t clear enough already – we need to go back to the report of the Caruana Galizia inquiry. Or perhaps we need to go back one step further. What does it mean to accept the report of an inquiry? And who’s expected to accept it?
Muscat and his fan club make much of the fact that, while he has accepted the Caruana Galizia report, the Caruana Galizia family has not “accepted” or (the verb sometimes varies) “acknowledged” the report of the Egrant inquiry.
The implication: Muscat respects the institutions; the family does not. The more excitable fans go further: Muscat respects the rule of law, the family does not.
Nonsense. Unless we’re dealing with social anarchy, rule-of-law questions concern people with power. In the democratic world, it’s expected that practising politicians – especially those in government – accept the reports of inquiries, even those they don’t like.
It’s how politicians ritually recognise that they are public servants, that their might does not make right. They effectively declare they will not ignore the report (and, if they do, their hypocrisy will be exposed).
None of this is expected of ordinary citizens for the simple reason that they have no power to suppress the inquiry report and its consequences. Whether or not they “acknowledge” the conclusions of an inquiry makes no difference.
What the institutions do is what matters. Proximity to power is what decides.
You have a grey area with retired politicians, once powerful, now distant from power. In 2016, in the UK, the Chilcot inquiry into Tony Blair’s decision to go to war in Iraq came out with a damning report on Blair’s style of government and decision-making. In response, Blair mounted a defiant defence in a two-hour conference.
Was that a case of challenging the rule of law? No. Blair had been out of office for nine years and was in any case challenging an inquiry whose report came out when Blair’s political party was out of power. Still, there were gasps and indignation in the press.
Malta is still picking up the tab run up by Joseph Muscat. And he still owes us an apology
Muscat hasn’t been out of power that long. His party is still in government and his former aides are serving the new administration. He’s still close enough to power. He set up the inquiry himself. Simply dismissing the inquiry report would raise democratic questions.
He alludes darkly to a member of the inquiry panel who is said to have pronounced himself on the subject matter of the inquiry before the fact. But if Muscat really wants to go down the Blair route, then he has to do it the Blair way: call a press conference, go through the report, and say why the evidence offered by the report is selective, misinterpreted, irrelevant or ignores inconvenient truths. But Muscat needs to show it. Because the inquiry report offers a mountain of evidence that eviscerates Muscat’s style of decision-making and government.
No single inquiry-panel member made up the evidence given by cabinet ministers, civil servants, government aides and journalists. Based on it, the report paints a detailed picture of how the state neglected its duties towards Caruana Galizia and, moreover, trampled over her rights. Moreover, it raised the risks she faced and created conditions where malefactors interested in silencing her could seriously imagine (rightly or wrongly) that they could get away with murder.
If Muscat wants to challenge the report, let him. We are all owed the truth. It is no disrespect of institutions to show where they have gone wrong. What’s disrespectful is pooh-poohing them (if only by implication) without giving reasons.
Until then, Muscat owes the nation an apology. The report shows him to have been – at best – sleeping on the job. His style of government weakened the state. When Panamagate and, later, the 17 Black revelations broke, he shirked his obvious duties – and that’s the kindest interpretation.
Nothing that Muscat has said since alters this judgement. Even in his interview with Herman Grech, for this newspaper, he continued to speak in ways that beggar belief.
On the one hand, he told us he has international clients willing to pay for his economic advice. On the other, the guru tells us he couldn’t immediately understand Panamagate and says he still can’t understand the Montenegro wind farm scandal.
Which client would want advice from someone who can’t instantly understand basic scams that the national and international press immediately understood?
This is what his defence, ultimately, amounts to: temporary, selective idiocy – an intellectual disability that’s the love child of selective memory and temporary insanity.
Well, idiocy doesn’t give you a pass if it has led to the state’s multiple system failure and, in consequence, the loss of the country’s reputation.
Muscat says that the ultimate political price has been borne by him. He has at various times described his resignation as the price for not acting on Panamagate, for not acting on 17 Black, for ignoring all the signs about Keith Schembri, and for Caruana Galizia’s assassination. Sounds like his resignation was a bargain.
No, he hasn’t been the one who has paid the ultimate political price. Malta is still picking up the tab run up by Muscat. And he still owes us an apology.