Thirteen weeks ago, Malta’s governance underwent a metamorphosis. Under Prime Minister Robert Abela, the new administration is as different from that which preceded it as chalk from cheese.
Confronted almost immediately by the threats of the coronavirus pandemic, the new government has been fighting its way through a fog, facing an uncertain enemy, cautious of the quagmire ahead. Its only guides to the future are either a century old or from other countries’ experience just a handful of weeks ago. We have witnessed a serious government with policies based on professional advice, clear communication of this to the public, and taking account of views of employers and unions.
Contrast Malta’s reaction to what is happening in some other parts of Europe.
Hungary is turning into the European Union’s first fully-fledged autocracy after its prime minister, Victor Orban, assumed the indefinite power to rule by decree.
In neighbouring Poland, the European Court of Justice has just ruled that a supreme chamber created to discipline judges is not independent and should be suspended. Europe’s highest court also ruled last week that Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic breached EU law when they refused to accept refugees under the emergency migrant quota scheme.
The EU seems powerless to act and there is as yet no process for expelling rogue states from the Union. While Brexit has shown that countries can leave the EU, there are no powers to expel them.
Hungary is perhaps the most blatant rebel in the Union’s midst. The emergency powers just arrogated to itself by the Orban government – ostensibly to combat the coronavirus – should put all Europeans on alert.
Under the so-called ‘omnipotence’ law, Orban will be able to take measures without parliamentary approval for as long as he sees fit. The emergency powers could presage an assault on the free press and the state takeover of energy and healthcare companies.
Journalists need to be wary of the prospect of five years in jail if they are convicted of spreading false news or ‘agitating the public’ – offences defined so loosely that they grant excessive power to a judiciary packed with Orban placemen.
Malta’s respect for the rule of law will not lightly be thrown away
In pursuit of his vision of a nationalistic Hungary, Orban has begun the corrosion of democratic institutions. He has made it a criminal offence for lawyers to come to the aid of asylum seekers, has removed judges critical of his actions from their posts, weakened the constitutional court and reduced the plenary sittings of the national assembly, thus stifling the voice of the official opposition Jobik party.
The granting of emergency powers to a leader such as this is not the same as allowing similar prerogatives (not that anything so extensive has been sought) to, say, Chancellor Angela Merkel or President Emmanuel Macron.
In a book considering whether the age of populism might be the prelude to the eclipse of liberal democracy – How Democracy Dies by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt – their most frightening argument was that even in established democracies, the point of maximum danger is a war-like crisis which demanded and justified dictatorial powers that are never then returned.
The implicit subject of that book was President Trump, but in fact the president – far from seizing excessive control – has taken a long time to comprehend he was even in a crisis. It certainly does not feel in France, Germany, Britain or Malta as if the coronavirus is the crisis from which liberal democracy never re-emerges.
On the contrary, Malta’s democracy in the last four months has rarely been in such rude good health.
The business of government has also focussed on taking positive strides towards completing long-promised judicial reforms in line with the Venice Commission’s recommendations.
In Hungary, the governing philosophy is incompatible with the advertised values of the EU. Indeed, it would not be granted entry to the Union if it were to apply today. There is a despot in its midst. Yet all the time that evidence has been accumulating about Orban’s trajectory, the EU has done nothing. It has balked at an outright confrontation and he, sensing weakness, has repeatedly used his attacks on Brussels to bolster his popularity at home.
Too many member states are reliant on deals they have cut with the Hungarians. Although Hungary’s Fidesz party has been suspended from the European People’s Party – the federalist pan-EU bloc that includes Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Malta’s Nationalist Party – it has failed to expel it because of Orban’s popularity among some of their voters and reliance on the votes of Hungarian MEPs in the European Parliament.
Most toothless of all has been the EU’s Article Seven clause – about which there has been much ill-informed discussion in Malta – that allows a member state to be stripped of its vote if its government poses a ‘systemic’ threat to freedom and democracy.
The EU has a fully-fledged dictatorship nestled within its structures, but the thresholds for triggering action are too high and there is too much ambiguity about its application.
Even if a serious recession follows the pandemic, thankfully in most EU nations COVID-19 will not herald a return to the politics of the 1930s that led to the extremes of populism evinced by Nazism and Fascism.
For sure, Malta has had longer to become accustomed to the virtues of democratic societies. As one of only a handful of democracies in the Union that is almost a century old, its respect for the rule of law will not lightly be thrown away.