Malta has a crime problem, fuelled in equal measure by a culture of impunity to take serious crime seriously and a problem of incompetence that lets criminals rest easy.
Pelin Kaya’s body had just been laid to rest, leaving Malta’s infamously slow wheels of justice to grind on. A day later, Robert Brincau, the prison director at Corradino, was found guilty of threatening a man with a service weapon and slightly injuring him. Calls for his resignation ensued. And rightfully so.
The home affairs minister had stuck his neck out for him, allowing a later-to-be convicted criminal to run the prison for another five months. The official ministry spokesperson said that Brincau’s case “wasn’t related to his work”.
We’re supposed to believe that that’s fine. The same ministry responsible for law enforcement was happy to keep someone responsible for reforming inmates in charge despite charges of a violent crime. The message was clear, and it is symptomatic of just how seriously crime is taken by the PL government. If Labour is happy to keep criminals in powerful government jobs, then the entire enforcement machinery is cast into serious doubt.
In the civil service, anyone subject to criminal accusations is at the very least suspended. Not so for the prison director. Despite himself being subject to criminal prosecution, he was kept there by Byron Camilleri’s ministry, in charge of criminal rehabilitation. This attitude feeds an insidious problem that is silently but steadily getting worse: impunity.
The same impunity kept Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi in power despite a closet full of skeletons and a sky blackened by albatrosses.
The same impunity enabled Silvio Valletta to undermine investigations into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
The same impunity let Labour ministers break electoral laws and use taxpayer money for unbridled self-promotion. The same impunity let MPs feel comfortable with taking bags of cash from those implicated in serious corruption. It is the same impunity that empowered Yorgen Fenech to think he could get away with murder.
The same impunity let Joseph Muscat’s buddies travel freely in and out of Malta despite active European Arrest Warrants. The same impunity made rogue soldiers think it was alright to kill Lassana Cisse.
Impunity: silently but steadily getting worse- David Casa
Impunity pours gasoline onto the fire that is the justice system in Malta. Our police force is already underequipped and overstretched. It is responsible for securing the safety of a population that has exploded in two decades, driven by a tenfold increase in the foreign population.
Population growth need not cause crime. Crime knows no nationality. The economic model chosen by the PL government is built upon a large imported workforce. But as Malta’s population reaches unprecedented figures, people want to know how it will cope under pressure.
It isn’t that the number of police officers has not risen proportionality to Malta’s population. Not only has it remained low, but police numbers have actually declined. This despite efforts to relax entry requirements to the police force down to the lowest standards ever. Meanwhile, corruption in government puts unwarranted pressure on the police, restricting them from getting on with their job. Impunity is not a passive exercise, as the public inquiry evidenced.
When a politically unconnected small fry is finally prosecuted, the cameras are invited in to make a spectacle as proof that the institutions are working. The spectacle returns when those institutions prove themselves incompetent with one botched prosecution after another.
It is no wonder that the Maltese are increasingly concerned for their safety. Malta does feel more unsafe, an admission the prime minister made himself. Yet residents who have spent months calling for stronger police presence remain ignored.
Residents and the police need more than a multimillion-euro investment in more new uniforms. First and foremost, they need incorruptible leadership with an inkling of a moral compass.
Between extreme court delays, poor enforcement and bungled prosecutions, less than half of the Maltese trust the justice system. All this happening against a backdrop of political corruption, the perception of which is higher now than it was in the Muscat era.
Residents deserve better, the police deserve better, Malta deserves better.
David casa is a Nationalist Party MEP.