Every year, the European Commission reviews the state of the rule of law in all member states including Malta. Every year, it publishes a report listing features that are less than perfect and needing improvement. Even the healthiest democracies of Europe get recommendations on how to make things better.
Malta’s shopping list of catastrophes is long, its problems well-documented, what it needs to do well and truly clear.
Since the second rule of law report, the European Commission asked every year a simple question: what progress has Malta achieved in improving things since the last report? They put the question to the government and ministers make colourful presentations proclaiming bold reforms, claims peppered with “unprecedented” and “transformative” and much such drivel.
The European Commission also puts the question on Malta’s progress to civil society organisations, people like the Aditus Foundation, Moviment Graffitti, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and Repubblika. Their response is different. They also report hearing the government’s declarations but they see no substance beneath their glossed-up surface.
Did the government say they studied reforming freedom of information laws? Be that as it may, they still respect FOI laws in the breach. In the process, they force news organisations to spend money they don’t have in lawsuits merely to get the information the public is entitled to.
Did the government say they would implement a national strategy against corruption? There’s no sign that a national ‘strategy’, such as it is, has made any difference. We know all about the privatisation of the hospitals and the contract with Electrogas and the secret nests exposed by the Panama Papers seven years ago and, yet, the wrists of Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi have not yet tasted metal.
Did the government say they would protect whistle-blowers? We still have a law that whistle-blowers would be wise to avoid using lest it be used against them and the government still refuses to discuss changes.
Did the government say they would protect journalists to ensure Daphne Caruana Galizia would be the last journalist to die on the line? Nearly six years since she was killed and three since an inquiry said what must be done, they’ve done nothing at all.
The best reading of this record is that Malta has made no progress in honouring its commitment to restore the rule of law in Malta. But that’s misleading. It would be lovely if we could celebrate staying still. These rule of law reports are snapshots but, in Malta’s case, a yearly snapshot makes for a movie in timelapse. We’re slipping. Fast.
Consider the law changing the way the commissioner for standards is appointed. Park for a moment the limits of the powers of that office, which couldn’t do much than criticise Rosianne Cutajar for taking cash from Yorgen Fenech days before denying his alleged crimes at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe. Park for a moment the fact the commissioner’s office was vacant for most of last year. Park for a moment the fact that they’re appointing someone who does not have the support of the opposition.
They are changing the law to legitimise by legislation the destruction of the standards commissioner’s authority- Manuel Delia
There’s a greater catastrophe here. The fact they changed the rules to allow them to fill the position alone when, up to now, they needed the agreement of the opposition shows that they are willing to use their powers to butcher laws designed to keep them in check.
It is bad enough that they undermine independent institutions. Consider, for example, how they make everyone think the ombudsman is useless by ignoring his reports, thereby frustrating any moral authority he might have.
What they’re doing with the commissioner for standards is worse. They are changing the law to legitimise by legislation the destruction of the commissioner’s authority. They are legislating their hostile takeover of that democratic institution. They are filing a minor instalment in their decades-embracing coup d’état.
If this had been an exceptional development, the government could argue that this was a change that needed making but not part of a broader trend of reverse democratisation. This is why they don’t want you to see the pattern.
There’s a pattern. Just in the last quarter of last year, on top of this change to the law on the standards commissioner, they also pulled out of the hat a law diluting academic independence, gnawing at another essential requirement for democracy.
Academics working at the University of Malta have barely noticed this because the change is not in the law setting up the institution they work for. They think they can go on happily. But the new law giving unqualified hire-and-fire power to the government over the board governing MCAST is more than a warning shot.
MCAST is handing out university degrees, supplanting the free-thinking university with a regimented, government-controlled, uncritical institution. Happy academics at the University of Malta may be oblivious to their replacement but that does not mean it is not happening. The government are playing the long game. They are the first government in Maltese history that can afford to think well beyond the next general election. They feel politically immortal and if they are to live that long, they’d rather rule with less democracy rather than more.
Here’s another new law from the last quarter. Officially it’s intended to cut delays in completing investigations when people die on construction sites, a consummation devoutly to be wished by all. Their solution? They are forcing on magistrates conducting inquiries the co-authorship of government officials, hired and fired by ministers, without any autonomy from the government.
What happens when the government is responsible for a deadly incident? For one thing, we’ll no longer have magistrates with security of tenure and constitutional independence looking into the evidence without fear or hindrance.
Robert Abela, like his predecessor, is methodically turning out any lights left exposing the nakedness of his administration. Unlike his predecessor, Abela is exquisitely successful at convincing us all that, in suffocating democracy, he is doing us all a favour.