2020 has revealed the shaky foundations upon which much of our lives have been built. And I’m not just talking COVID-19. Here in Malta, the coronavirus will always be associated with something else... or perhaps someone else.
Yorgen Fenech and coronavirus made media headlines at roughly the same time: towards the end of 2019. The first known case of the coronavirus was November 17, 2019, the very same week that Fenech was arrested on board his yacht in connection with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. And a month later, in December, both issues became clearer.
December 27, 2019 was an eventful day in both China and Malta. In China, Zhang Jixian, head of the respiratory department of Hubei provincial hospital, reported to the health authorities that a novel coronavirus was causing a disease which until then had infected no more than about 180 individuals. Closer to home, Times of Malta reported that Fenech had been one of Joseph Muscat’s guests at a birthday party held at the former prime minister’s Girgenti residence earlier that year.
Fenech had come bearing gifts – three bottles of Petrus, a fine wine worth thousands of euros. Muscat, of course, argued that the wine was never actually enjoyed by him and was passed on to the state; but the personalised nature of the gifts (the vintages, respectively, of 1974 and 2007) was suggestive nonetheless of a certain familiarity, 1974 being the year of Muscat’s birth and 2007 that of his twin daughters. This gift was not simply a breach of the 1995 code of ethics for members of parliament but evidence of an inappropriate closeness between the two men, which, given the circumstances, was more than routinely unethical, even by Maltese standards.
December 27 was the beginning of the end of life and social order as we knew it. Certainties disappeared and the future looked bleak. As coronavirus cases started to multiply in a less-than-transparent China, Malta grappled with its own lack of transparency. With Fenech now in prison lockdown and Muscat having given notice that he planned to resign in January 2020, there was a growing sense that 2020 would be anything but joyful.
And so it proved. The ongoing coronavirus and Fenech sagas have attracted wall-to-wall media coverage, and both have blown the lid on things we always knew about but always failed to address. ‘Gift-giving’ being one of them.
So far, we’ve only mentioned three bottles of Pomerol claret but there is now the matter of a 2017 sojourn in a Tel Aviv hotel brought recently to light, a favour allegedly solicited by Jason Azzopardi and financed by the Fenech group.
Azzopardi has since admitted to calling up Tumas Group director, Ray Fenech, but still insists that he was only after a hotel ‘recommendation’! ‘Tel (Aviv) it to the Marines’ would make a great title for that story.
We all know that gifts are never without some form of expectation- Michela Spiteri
Now Muscat’s extended political family (by which I mean his supporters) would argue that soliciting a gift is far more unscrupulous than simply receiving one. Both may be unethical but only one is premeditated. Making a seemingly innocuous phone call, when all along your intentions were to cash in, is somehow far more sinister than accepting a birthday gift of which you had no prior knowledge.
Azzopardi’s tribe would riposte that birthday parties presuppose birthday presents and that Muscat ought to have pre-empted the situation by sending out a polite ‘no-gift’ message or insisting on gifts going to charity.
They’d also argue that Muscat’s position as prime minister in 2019 was far more sensitive and exposed than Azzopardi’s as shadow justice minister in 2017 and also that the Tel Aviv freebie was long before Fenech showed up on the police radar.
I am not going to bore you with the law. And I’m not here to make excuses for either gentleman. The bottom line is that two MPs fell hopelessly short, demonstrating that even the best designed codes of conduct are useless unless there is political and moral will.
Had Fenech not blown the lid on both these incidents, we would be none the wiser. And I am certain that this is just the tip of an almighty iceberg. There can be little doubt that most MPs don’t even know where to look for the code of ethics, let alone read it and be guided by its principles.
Codes of ethics and conduct are much like the Ten Commandments. Both should come naturally. We don’t need to read Exodus to know that when we kill, steal or bear false witness, we are breaking a moral code that will come back to haunt us. This is something that Melvin Theuma (another face of 2020) has discovered to his cost. And it’s the same with accepting gifts when you’re in a position of power and trust.
Like the Ten Commandments, a code of ethics is there for your own protection, to safeguard you, your family and your office from embarrassment, shame and disgrace, something that Muscat, Azzopardi, et al have all had to learn the hard way.
We all know that gifts are never without some form of expectation. Gifts are generally exchanged, a reciprocity that is usually a fair balance. But they’re more problematic when the giving is one way. That’s because when someone gives you a gift – even if you aren’t a member of parliament or in the police corps – that someone retains ownership of the gift and comes out on top. The recipient is under an obligation, which no amount of ‘gift recycling’ can dispel.
Now that the 12 days of Christmas have been replaced by the 12 rules of Christmas, politicians should not just think about washing hands, wearing masks and social distancing. They should distance themselves from gifts and understand that the greatest gift they can give themselves is not to compromise themselves and their office.