There haven’t been many occasions when Prime Minister Robert Abela spoke of Repubblika – the NGO, not the polity. It was never to disagree with it or to respond to questions it put to him. His rare remarks have been invariably existential. They were always about Repubblika’s right to exist, or, rather, that it doesn’t have that.
It started very early on in his premiership. In April 2020, Repubblika criticised the prime minister’s decision to order the army not to respond to people calling for rescue when their attempt to cross the sea from Libya to Europe failed. We had asked the police to investigate whether that decision contributed to the deaths of 12 young men who drowned many hours after they made the Maltese army aware of their whereabouts.
That night, Abela interrupted the evening news on TV. Flanked by all his ministers, he acknowledged for the first time in a public context the existence of Repubblika. He proceeded to charge its leaders as fifth columnists, undermining efforts to combat COVID by smuggling the virus in the bodies of migrants. The charge of treason took hold.
Barely a year later, in March 2021, the authorities commenced procedures to declare Repubblika an illegal organisation, abolish it, or, at least, criminalise the mere act of donating to its activities. They tried to use laws written to smoke out terrorist organisations to ban a group of people whose arsenal of weapons was limited to press releases and an occasional peaceful gathering in a public square.
Because there needed to be one, the pretext was that Repubblika wasn’t really an NGO but a front for a political party. They produced opinions written by activists as evidence for this claim, including some columns in the series that you now read. The opinions were critical of the authorities and, they claimed, proved we were agents of the opposition as if you needed to be an opposition politician to express disgust with systemic corruption.
Several embassies expressed their outrage at this to ministers. Banning Repubblika by misuse of law would certify the Maltese authorities as undemocratic. The government backed down. They fired the official doing the hatchet job for them and dropped the idea of banning Repubblika through formal means. Instead, they launched a sophisticated attrition campaign. It still goes on because Repubblika is still around. It will go on until Repubblika folds.
Consider Abela’s recent reaction to a complaint we filed to ask the police to look into a minister helping another minister misuse public funds to pay a secretary who was his girlfriend. The prime minister didn’t merely say he disagreed with the allegation that there’s been embezzlement in this case. He went on to accuse Repubblika of acting vexatiously, that is, spitefully, in the knowledge that its police report was unjustified, maliciously, and, the use of the term alleges, unlawfully.
The question for Abela was no longer whether his ministers had done anything wrong but shifted instead to whether Repubblika had the right to ask anyone to check if a crime had occurred.
I need to state the bleeding obvious. Asking the police to investigate a crime we believe has occurred is not the same as convicting someone. It’s not in the same ballpark. It’s not the same bloody game. For anything to happen to the persons we allege have done something wrong, the police must agree. Then, the attorney general would have to agree with them. Then, a magistrate would have to agree with the prosecutor. Then, the matter could be appealed to higher courts before ministers could face any consequence due to a complaint filed by little old us.
In March 2021, the authorities commenced procedures to declare Repubblika an illegal organisation, abolish it, or, at least, criminalise the mere act of donating to its activities- Manuel Delia
If this was indeed a vexatious complaint, why was the prime minister so concerned? Won’t the police dump it before the day is out? Won’t the prosecutor? After all, the prime minister has more access to both those institutions than we’ll ever have. The likelihood they’ll act in the way he would choose far exceeds any chance they would opt to investigate and prosecute a vexatious complaint.
There’s something else Abela said about the complaint. He spoke about its provenance: the report’s authors were not, as the prime minister saw it, an NGO lawfully set up with the declared mission of campaigning against corruption and for the rule of law. They were, as the discourse goes, “an extremist branch of the PN”.
Jason Micallef, a very senior Labour Party and government official, used the phrase again. He explicitly promised retribution against Repubblika activists – the extremist branch of the PN – for the interruption, temporary as he believes it to be, of Joseph Muscat’s political career.
Being “an extremist branch of the PN” is one of those hyperbolic insults it is tempting to dismiss as throwaway rhetoric. This occupational hazard comes with being even mildly critical of the authorities. Because of the hellish context in which we live, because of our incurable tribalism.
But the use of the phrase by the prime minister and his associates is more sinister than that. It repeats, to a far more devastating effect, the botched attempt to abolish Repubblika formally in 2021. If Repubblika is a branch of the PN, its denunciations and actions with the police and in the courts are not grounded in fact but in the pursuit of partisan advantage.
If it is an extremist branch of whatever, it has no right to exist because it is dangerous and seditious. The police have no place to respond to calls for action made by an extremist group. They should be arresting extremists, not exchanging letters with them.
“An extremist branch of the PN” is not an insult or a rhetorical device. It is a state-perpetrated act of delegitimising and silencing critics, of denying citizens their sacred right to speak their minds about the way they’re governed and to seek the protection of independent institutions from maladministration and corruption.
It is a threat that so-called “vexatious” and “extremist” acts will meet punishment. It warns others to shut up or face the same retribution. Therefore, it is an act of isolation to reinforce the intimidation and the delegitimisation.
That’s what’s happening here.