If journalists are watchdogs, then Deutsche Welle’s Tim Sebastian is the love-child of a St Bernard and a rottweiler, gazing at his interviewees with sorrowful eyes and glum jowls as he mauls them. You may have heard of his recent encounter with our foreign minister, Evarist Bartolo.
Bartolo seems to regard Sebastian as more of a Grand Inquisitor. “I like Savonarola but I prefer Galileo,” he said, begging for understanding.
Bartolo was ostensibly speaking of his survival strategy within the Labour Party when the Panama Papers broke. But who knows if he wasn’t also giving away his strategy to survive Sebastian? Act contrite, retract what you believe and live another day.
Sebastian would have none of it. Savonarola publicly denounced corruption; Galileo revealed secrets of how the world works. Sebastian accused Bartolo of revealing nothing of what he knew and putting up with gross corruption.
The interview addressed the events that led from the Panama Papers to Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination, Joseph Muscat’s disgrace and Robert Abela’s new government.
Throughout, Bartolo’s answers created – do savour the paradox – the appearance of a hidden world, where he fought for change from within the citadels of Labour; ultimately, late last year, telling Muscat that he, Bartolo, would resign if others (he did not name them) did not go.
But, as Sebastian kept pointing out, you can’t say something is unacceptable and then accept it. That only means you find it acceptable after all. Bartolo’s response was, effectively, that he was engaged in a political fight, which is always a struggle to do what’s possible, in dim light, without the brightness of hindsight.
It’s easy to dismiss the interview as a car crash and Bartolo’s answers as a tactic of conceding some blame to escape condemnation for larger sins. But that would miss important aspects of Bartolo’s answers.
Bartolo’s central argument was couched in terms of political truth: the art of the possible given the constraints, resources and relationships. Within this truth, however, are ensconced four other kinds.
There’s sociological truth. Bartolo kept invoking the constraints of small island-states. Friendships and connections, he said, inevitably transcend office and formal powers, given the shortage of personnel. The media have too small a market to escape dependence on political parties.
True but also self-serving. The public broadcaster depends on the State, not political parties, and the State chooses not to give it the resources to be truly independent.
Independent news media struggle but it is possible to survive. What is difficult is living with organised partisan intimidation by withholding State advertising and by organising online armies against particular journalists.
The problem of personnel is real but not all small states have our current problems. Indeed, we didn’t always have the present problems on this scale. It took specific, targeted actions to undermine the already incomplete autonomy of our supervisory authorities and public service.
Small-scale we may be. But our predicament is the result of a series of choices, not destiny.
Small-scale we may be. But our predicament is the result of a series of choices, not destiny
Next, Bartolo defended his crypto-truths: the gnomic utterances during the crises of 2016 and 2019. Apparently, if you believe that you live in a land of Lilliput logic, you can speak by allusions to myths and parables.
Sebastian scoffed but Bartolo insisted everyone understood what he was saying. Yes, but the veiled nature of the remarks was itself a message: of fear. If a senior politician is afraid, how should the rest of us feel? Bartolo’s messaging reinforced the status quo as much as it distanced itself from it.
Bartolo added ethical truth, that of the confessional. He conceded that perhaps he should have resigned four years ago. He said that the online armies savaging Caruana Galizia (and, he could have been told, other journalists) were “unacceptable”.
But he also said such attacks were part of our political culture. No, they were made part of our political culture when face-to-face aggression was deliberately transferred to new terrain – online – by partisan operatives, with rewards using State resources. Once more, we are talking of choice not destiny.
Nor was Bartolo acknowledging sins that lie squarely in the past. They continue to be committed. The “unacceptable” deeds traceable in the Panama Papers continue to have their public face in Konrad Mizzi, member of Bartolo’s parliamentary group. The organised online attacks continue, too.
Is Bartolo, given what he recognises now, ready to insist publicly that both Mizzi and the online groups must no longer be embraced by Labour? Otherwise, what kind of acknowledgement is it?
Finally, there is forensic truth. Bartolo’s most significant assurance was that both Abela and the new police minister, Byron Camilleri, are prepared to pursue the full truth of the assassination to wherever it leads.
He says that events will bear him out. Yet his assurances on the other matters – that he fought internally for justice, that he did what was possible – have a disturbing undercurrent. They only make sense if his was a solitary or minority voice. Why else did he not succeed?
He is implicitly saying that, even though he fought vigorously for principle, he did not find much support. What does that say about the governing party? The Labour parliamentary group in 2020 is not much different from what it was in 2016.
Let us hope that the future will bear Bartolo out. However, what the country needs is not just knowledge of the forensic facts. National reconciliation presupposes human understanding of how intelligent men and women could have been strung along, from 2016 till this very day, to accept what they say is unacceptable.
They need to tell us what they witnessed in the citadel. They need to say not just that they struggled but what the struggle was. Then, perhaps, the rest of us can say, “There but for the grace of God...”
ranierfsadni@europe.com