‘Very little has changed in Malta,' says Pieter Omtzigt
The former Dutch MP is sceptical of the Labour government's reform track record
A former Dutch MP who spearheaded the Council of Europe’s efforts to ensure justice for journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia fears very little has changed in Malta.
Omtzigt was in Malta last week commemorating the eight-year anniversary of the journalist’s assassination in October 2017. “Unfortunately, I have seen little change in political culture, little progress in the reforms, and still very few convictions in the high-profile crime and corruption cases that shook Maltese society,” he said.
A 2021 public inquiry into the murder recommended to fight corruption and combat unexplained wealth. The reforms included criminalising obstruction of justice by government officials, regulating lobbying and introducing unexplained wealth orders. To date, these recommendations have been ignored.
Omtzigt, who set up the New Social Contract in 2023, a centrist party that focuses on strengthening the rule of law in the Netherlands, questioned why the government has failed to live up to its anti-corruption promises. “What are they afraid of if they have nothing to hide?”
The executive power is not kept in check- Pieter Omtzigt
Omtzigt says that GRECO, the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body, had identified back in 2018 that the police and the Attorney General’s office suffer from a culture of inertia when confronted with corruption by powerful figures. “That assessment sadly still stands,” Omtzigt says.
According to Omtzigt, the picture in Malta is still one where there is a complete lack of checks and balances between state powers. “To be more precise: the executive power is not kept in check.”
He pinpoints Malta’s “extremely weak” parliament as being one of the key contributors to this. Apart from MPs being underpaid, half of the MPs in parliament are either ministers or have a job in some sort of government agency or department. These MPs should be independent, so they are able to scrutinise the government.
“Parliamentary scrutiny is the opposite of saying; everything is okay or everything is bad. Quite the contrary: it means checking each law, line by line, and holding government policy to account. “Other countries of similar size, like Luxembourg and Iceland, do manage to get this right, so there is no reason for Malta not to.”