Perhaps it would help to be an architect and a lawyer to understand Robert Musumeci’s tweets. I’m neither. But as an amateur reader I believe a series of his tweets around the Santa Marija holiday were in praise of the PN for having finally “touched base” which appears to be intended to mean finally stepping into the right side.
Tweet number 1: “The Schiavone experience has shown one thing – the PN was living in cuckoo land for many years. Finally, they touched ground.”
The ‘Schiavone experience’ refers to the reinstatement in the Nationalist Party parliamentary group of Hermann Schiavone, the MP who several weeks ago resigned from the group when he was caught, with Kristy Debono who did not resign, meeting Yorgen Fenech, ostensibly to discuss a sponsorship from him.
The issue over Yorgen Fenech is not “many years” old. So perhaps Musumeci is also referring to the fact that for decades the PN leadership was suspicious of Schiavone’s character and refused to allow him to run on its ticket. Under Eddie Fenech Adami and Lawrence Gonzi he was left off the list of candidates.
During Simon Busuttil’s only general election campaign, Schiavone was selected as a candidate. For reasons never fully explained the candidate’s character flaws that prevented him from running in previous editions were overlooked in 2017 presumably by a new leadership that was more tolerant.
Whether it is because of those previously known flaws, or others only just discovered, Schiavone made the “error of judgement” of having a meeting with Fenech that Reuters found owns 17 Black, the Dubai company shown by the Panama Papers to be committed to pay $5,000 a day in bribes to Panama companies owned by Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi.
Tweet number 2: “The HTT have no idea of what sustainable contexts in a trade-off environment are all about. It took some 10 massive election defeats for PN to realise (sic) what ‘standards’ to embrace. Finally, they’re touching base.”
HTT, apparently, stands for ‘holier than thou’. That’s anyone who thinks it’s not OK for a politician to solicit a ‘sponsorship’ from a business tycoon reasonably suspected of bribing other politicians for public contracts. I’m not sure if I’m ‘holier than thou’. But I’m definitely holier than that.
This obscure second tweet, I do believe, is of a congratulatory nature. Allow me to translate. In reversing Schiavone’s resignation, the PN has now shifted to an ethical frame of mind that can get it elected.
It appears that Musumeci believes that a compromise between politics and bribery is necessary for electoral success. Keeping away from corruption is a recipe for electoral loss.
Let’s look at the “base” the PN has touched in this case. In its report the ‘ethics board’ within the PN found Schiavone had made an error of judgement in meeting Fenech but no wrongdoing had occurred. No law or party rule has been broken.
The sophistry that Schiavone’s actions were not illegal is familiar. We get it all the time as the central justification of the snorting at the trough that Labour has developed into a system of government.
But is that not the point of ethics, to judge between right and wrong when rules are vague and unspecific? Does the PN need to have a rule that says ‘though shalt not consort with businessmen that have bribed other politicians’ to determine that that is improper behaviour?
The fact is the disagreement with Musumeci is more profound. He not only disagrees that this is improper behaviour. He thinks it is altogether desirable behaviour and it is improper to criticise it.
It appears that Musumeci believes that a compromise between politics and bribery is necessary for electoral success
Tweet number 3: “The HTT’s hallmark was to rely on moral integers to govern this country. The idea worked for years. However, this came along with one BIG cost – widespread hate fermented by the English speaking elites under the premise of freedom of expression.”
Any attempt to translate this to a language I can claim to understand is likely to diminish Musumeci’s intent. It’s like trying to translate the Book of Revelations. I’m not entirely sure what ‘moral integers’ are and if the English-speaking elites speak anything like Musumeci’s tweet, I’d get asthma in those thin and heady heights.
But we can try. It would seem to me that Musumeci here is saying that in staying away from corruption, or seeking it out, or rising above it, or attempting to banish it, the ‘holier than thou’ have made themselves into a snobbish elite, disdainful of a majority for whom corruption is okay.
Up to that point he may even be right. But then he gives that choice – staying away from corruption and being critical of those who do not – a normative value.
He says they are wrong to make that choice because it has the effect of causing “hate” which in any case they have no right to do whatever illusions they may have about their rights.
Do I hate corruption?
There was a time, before the PN “touched base” when even if you didn’t, you would have felt pressure to say yes.
When John Dalli was a PN politician doing whatever it is that he did that would earn him the title ‘the disgraced John Dalli’, he did not go about saying that corruption was good. On the contrary, he put a front of advocating for fiscal morality.
That’s because ethics are not only an objective guide, a platonic truth that we cerebrally peruse whenever in doubt.
They are also a social standard, a norm that is enforced by the shock and scandal that a community expresses when someone in authority falls from grace.
Musumeci finds it “unsustainable”, “cuckoo”, “fomenting hate” to feel and express shock and anger at corruption. He thinks rather that we should learn, as the PN finally has, “to realise what standards to embrace”.
They’re the same standards, presumably, with which he conducts himself. We must at least measure any individual’s behaviour by the standards they publicly set themselves. Musumeci is a public official. He is a recognised authority on planning law. He is an opinion former and a political operative.
He counts as his clients developers who seek to push on building limits of height, intensity and encroachment on the last remaining plots of pristine soil.
By his own standard, having a standard is hateful. We can only presume he has none.
These claims of his reflect on his life partner, Judge Consuelo Scerri Herrera. She sits in judgment of appeals from the lower criminal courts.
Are we not to expect a judge to be, if not holier than thou, holier than the convicted criminals who plead before her?
Will she make a judgment call on the basis of normative, ethical choices when the law is vague or would she think she’s being a hateful snob if she did that?
Or does Musumeci think only politicians are exempt from ethical standards of behaviour and judges have to abide by them? Would it be okay if she asked Fenech for a sponsorship? Would it matter if eventually he would appear before her as an appellant?
Schiavone secretly met Fenech. He got caught and suspended himself in embarrassment. The PN has declared its MP has done nothing wrong. Musumeci applauds. If you disagree with any of this you are part of the English-speaking elites who under the premise of freedom of expression are fomenting widespread hate. Forget everything you’ve ever known. We are now in the Musumeci experience.