See you later

For the last few years I have enjoyed the privilege of writing a weekly column in this newspaper, a privilege I am about to relinquish and not without regret. It seems to have taken decades to win the prize, the concession to spout my opinions as I please or almost.

As The Times' anonymous law reporter in the 1980s I was not required to sign my reports. I am not quite sure why not. I was also kept to a strict regimen: no comment, no personal opinion, no adjectives and no adverbs that did not originate in court documents or reported speech.

The discipline and the years of frustration may have served me somehow. Yes they did. I looked into the eyes of murderers and frauds. I listened to the evidence of the victims of human rights violations. I watched as thousands were treated as the expendables of the judicial system, left to pine away for years in Dickensian forensic hope while their cases dragged on from generation to generations.

When the Church schools case was passed from judge to judge until the last one was obliged to hear it, I lost any shreds of deference I had left. Still, I was not allowed an adjective to express my contempt. Nor was I able to express my sympathy for the late Judge Carmel Scicluna, left alone to be lambasted by an irate Prime Minister in a live television broadcast from Parliament for having the temerity to be a judge. At a time when newspaper buildings were known to be burned down by rioters, nobody spoke a word in Judge Scicluna's defence. He was a minority of one because he was a judge.

They were years when the bizarre and the spectacular became normal. Young people find it hard to believe what it was like. The reds think it is all a fabrication and the blues an exaggeration. Almost nobody seems to have grasped what became my own personal conviction: that the enemy is not the other side but a system that tends naturally to polarisation, eliminating neutrals and stifling all tolerance and reasonable debate. We were killing one another in a country where everybody is everybody else's cousin.

My ringside seat in all the legal battles allowed me an intimate acquaintance with the blind prejudice of both sides. When would they ever be able to talk reasonably, not in fear for their lives and fortunes and those of their offspring? When would the resentment fade away? Every new outrage created yet another legacy of hatred. Two decades later it remains a precious weapon in the Nationalist arsenal.

Perhaps it was the profound rejection of that futile and destructive war that drove me to be Green. Certainly the commons were the first casualties in the fray.

Nature conservation was counted an extravagance. First ideology then sleaze prevented proper land use. The contamination of ground water, the pollution of every breath we take and of the sea all around us were considered to be secondary concerns.

Nobody wanted to heed warnings or to notice the permanent and irreversible damage being done. One day the very names of the PN and the MLP will be forgotten but the damage wrought while they were busy with their wars will still be here.

Challenged to act on my convictions I became a co/founder of a new political party and editor of its newspaper.

From no comment reporting I dived in at the deep end of no holds barred investigative reporting and political commentary from a completely new perspective. It was new also for our audience and the libels rained down principally because the targets of our criticism were unused to it.

The courts were new to the game also and we were often punished for doing our job well. One day I will write a book about the damage done by the law of libel as interpreted by our courts.

Since taking on the task of leading Alternattiva Demokratika and, particularly, since the EU accession process, The Times has accorded me more space and I have tried to make good use of it. Now it is time to move on. Having been engaged as consulting editor to the MediaToday newspapers, it seems not altogether appropriate that I should also occupy a weekly column here.

It is time to bid farewell to Times readers as I wish them all the very best for 2009. The editor has kindly offered to publish my articles from time to time and I will be glad to take him up on his offer.

It is more a see you later than a definite adieu. My privileges have been increased and I am far freer to enjoy them than ever before.

Dr Vassallo is a committee member of the European Green Party.

hvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt