The Council of Europe’s point-man on the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry, Pieter Omtzigt, has queried the government’s terms of reference for the inquiry, as well as raised questions about the members of the panel. The government has retorted that his judgement on such matters has little credibility.
The government isn’t going to persuade anyone from the ranks of the vast majority of CoE politicians or international journalists that are looking critically at the inquiry’s set-up. In fact, Omtzigt’s 15-point statement was adopted by a large majority at the CoE Assembly. There’s a simple reason. Omtzigt’s personal judgement and integrity are irrelevant to the issue. He is applying a standard that is applied by the government’s critics elsewhere, not just to Malta.
When the CoE first approved a report that requested the government to set up a public inquiry within three months, the only CoE MPs to support their Labour colleagues’ objections were drawn from countries and political parties that have an unsavoury reputation among the rest, such as Azerbaijan and far-right populists. That level of support is unlikely to change.
The reason is that what Omtzigt has highlighted parallels developments in Europe and North America that are worrying mainstream European politicians, too.
Take Omtzigt’s insistence that the inquiry should weigh the relevance of politicians’ and political aides’ rhetoric about Caruana Galizia, in judging whether her life was placed in unnecessary danger. That very standard is being applied right now to Donald Trump, whose incendiary rhetoric about his current Ukraine scandal is said to be putting the whistleblower’s life in danger. Trump has also been accused of putting journalists at risk when accusing them of being the enemy of the people.
In the UK, the same standard is also being applied to Boris Johnson. His accusation that his opponents support a “surrender bill” has been linked to death threats being sent to Opposition women MPs.
Johnson, of course, rejects the accusation. He not only says he’s been a model of restraint; he claims that the language he has used has long been part of the culture of debate in the House of Commons. That defence – that one should make an allowance for a particular cultural environment – is similar to one of the defences offered up by the Malta government when the Omtzigt report was debated.
The government’s excuse was rejected back then just as Johnson’s defence is widely rejected now. There is no double standard being applied to Malta.
Nor is there a prejudice against it. On the contrary, it’s being held to the same standard expected of the most advanced democracies. Do we really want to say that our European partners should expect less of us?
We’d have been a better society, with a more decent public culture, if inquiries had been held into the deaths of Karin Grech and Raymond Caruana. We missed our chance and our public culture has paid a price. Why miss it again?
We cannot dismiss the standard by saying that it’s a partisan one – that yes, Trump and Johnson are being held to the same standard but it’s one that their opponents are exploiting for partisan advantage. It’s just a convenient stick with which to beat Trump and Johnson out of office.
If that’s the argument, it’s fascinating how the defence of the Maltese national interest has morphed to require a defence of Trump and Johnson, two of the most loathed politicians in continental Europe. Such an argument, though, does nothing to show that Omtzigt has a special prejudice against the Malta government.
All it does is align Malta with two right-wing populist governments. Omtzigt would feel vindicated. For he is saying – almost in as many words – that Maltese right-wing populism should be investigated for any political responsibility for Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
It also misses the point to say that women politicians and journalists and minorities routinely receive vicious online abuse and threats elsewhere in the democratic world.
It’s true that, in 2017, the same year Caruana Galizia was killed, the Pew Research Center surveyed Americans who experience online abuse and found that most abuse was directed against minorities. In the UK, also in 2017, every woman MP active on Twitter reported online threats.
And the abusive comments beneath columnists’ articles have led some UK media organisations to decide not to open the comments’ threads for some topics. It’s partly out of concern for the welfare of the writers who are abused.
Why does reporting this – as part of a defence put up by the government – miss the point? Because nobody is claiming it doesn’t happen elsewhere. On the contrary, the particular concern being expressed for the situation in Malta arises out of a general concern for the situation developing in Europe and North America.
That general concern is expressed every time the number of journalists killed worldwide is remembered. It’s expressed every time the topic of discussion is how the deteriorating conditions of political debate may cause irreparable damage to democratic institutions.
It’s not international envy or any individual’s lack of judgement that sometimes leads the focus to be on Malta. It’s rather a general anxiety that the democratic line needs to be defended wherever its institutions seem to be under threat.
If the aim is to persuade the international sceptics that Malta’s reputation is being unfairly tarnished, there is one simple rejoinder: a public inquiry designed to address the doubts. To pretend that international opinion has nothing to do with it is to ignore why the government set it up in the first place. It wasn’t because of the demands of the Caruana Galizia family. It was because the CoE insisted.
Of course, the inquiry is above all for national benefit. The political questions surrounding the assassination go beyond whether there was a conspiracy or collusion involving public officials. They’re also about whether Caruana Galizia’s death was aided and abetted by the modus operandi of our public culture.
The same general question could be raised about the rather different murders of Karin Grech, in the 1970s, and Raymond Caruana in the 1980s. We’d have been a better society, with a more decent public culture, if inquiries had been held into them. We missed our chance and our public culture has paid a price. Why miss it again?