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Mediawatch

The seven year wait

Joseph Muscat’s government had been in power for 1682 days on the day Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated. That’s 4 years, 7 months and 7 days.

On the last of those 4 years, 7 months and 7 days Daphne Caruana Galizia would write those fatal words that are now part of the history of this nation. “The crooks are everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.”

It took just 1682 days, probably even less, for the crooks to spread themselves “everywhere you look”. It took just nigh 5 years under the watch of Joseph Muscat’s government for the situation to become desperate.

The 16th October 2017 was a dark day in Malta’s history. It was the day a journalist was brutally silenced for doing her work. Daphne Caruana Galizia was shedding light on an intricate web of corruption within the political elite. That corruption, that democratic backsliding, did not stop on the 16th October. That day only served to ignite a flame and a quest for justice – as that banner crafted by Daphne’s father loudly proclaims in the fields of Bidnija.

Seven years have gone by since that fateful day. Seven years without Daphne. Seven years in which the battle for the truth has not abated. Yet seven years in which the backsliding, the corruption, the lack of meritocracy also seem to hold strong.

Time. It still surprises me. That figure of 4 years 7 months and one week is impressive when you think of it. It is a brief amount of time in which a huge number of corrupt decisions and appointments were made. the seeds of scandals must have been sown early on during the Muscat legislature but they grew fast enough to fester and draw the attention of Malta’s sharpest investigative journalist.

4 years, 7 months and one week were enough to turn the Running Commentary into an encyclopedic chronicle of the realm of crooked dealings. Seven years after the attempt to silence the chronicler’s message we still do not realise the enormity of Muscat’s government’s achievements. Hospitals, power stations, health agreements, public contracts, the public service itself – all of these twisted to the service of a self-serving, self-entitled cadre of trough hogging pigs.

In the course of one legislature the systemic breakdown of a nation was plotted and put into action. Daphne Caruana Galizia’s attention to detail was too uncomfortable for the record breaking concocters of corruption. They had managed to neutralise the constitutional checks and balances but Caruana Galizia was too loud, too distracting, too dangerously close to the truth to be allowed the luxury of working.

They tried to cripple her through her resources. They tried to bully her into submission. They tried sent little men to stalk her and follow her every move. When that did not work they moved in for the kill.

Then it happened. 4 years, 7 months and one week after Joseph Muscat was elected to power a bomb went off in Bidnija that would send shock waves to the system.

Seven years later we take stock of the battle for justice for Daphne. It is a battle for transparency that goes beyond the freedom of expression and safety of journalists. Like it or not, it has become a battle for the Republic and whatever values remain.

The long, hard struggle remains essentially a frustrating effort. The damage wrought on the constitutional balances in the first five years of Labour in power runs deep. Initiatives at national and international level following the assassination are still not bearing the desired fruits and resistance to proper change remains palpable.

As the conversation on Malta’s political future continues, it is clear that the spirit of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work lives on in those who continue to seek truth and justice. The path ahead is one of reflection, reform, and resilience, as we grapple with our past to shape a more just and open society.

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Constitutional Development Politics Zolabytes

Now there’s no Daphne to blame – guest post

The author of this guest post is known to me. Opinions expressed in this post are the author’s and I do not necessarily subscribe to all of them.

The Labour Party has just secured its third term after garnering 55.1% of the popular vote against the Nationalist Party that only managed to secure 41.74%. After the Electoral Commission published its data on Monday, it was then time to look at the numbers and how both parties fared during the election.

In 2017, then disgraced prime minister Joseph Muscat called for an early election in the wake of the Panama Papers leak which saw his right-hand man Keith Schembri and then minister Konrad Mizzi caught red handed with offshore structures set up to allegedly receive kickbacks and a third mysterious company. That same year, we also had a then economy minister allegedly visiting a brothel while on government business and ‘17 Black’ dropped by investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Following the June snap election, many took to Facebook to “analyse” the PN’s internal situation and demand change from the Nationalist Party, even though they would never bring themselves to vote for the party, despite claims to the contrary. Whilst celebrating Labour’s victory, and at the time “absolving” Mizzi of his sins, many sought to pin the defeat on someone or something.

The easiest target was Daphne Caruana Galizia – she had been targeted by trolls and the Labour party machine for years. Journalists only discovered solidarity after her assassination otherwise the country is made up of people too busy polishing their egos, and her stories had not yet been “proven”. As the country’s institutions were dismantled, especially the police force, there was no one out there willing to investigate her stories. Thereby remaining largely just what they were – articles on a blog. While some took up those stories and started questioning, others stopped at who wrote them. Incapable of formulating an opinion of their own, then it was reduced to “hatred” towards the Labour Party and its then-leader or even worse the journalist was some PN stooge.

(Fast forward to a few years later and people realised that there was truth to those stories, however, some of the country’s institutions continue to drag their feet). It was in this context that Caruana Galizia was blamed for the PN’s loss and subsequently isolated when Adrian Delia and his baggage was taken to the party. It is obvious that after such a defeat, in a country that treats politics like a derby match, people within the party wanted heads to roll and a new start.

Specifically for this post, I went to look up reports carried by the Labour propaganda machine in the aftermath of the election and the time Delia was elected.

The seeds of the second colossal loss by PN were sown in 2013 Martin Scicluna had told us in an article on the 2017 election where he argued that the PN had ignored its post-mortem report following the previous election. Scicluna had argued that the PN should have formally disassociated itself from Caruana Galizia.

2022 was the first election without Daphne Caruana Galizia, the first one without her commentary, sharp wit and everything in between. And here we are again, with the PN losing to the PL with over 39,000. However, there is no Daphne to blame this time around, as people seek to blame by proxy, and “independent” newspapers push the Labour line whether consciously or not, by bashing those who have stood with activists in the anti-corruption fight.

In this election, the winner is the mafia who wanted to ensure that everything was closed off as soon as the “people spoke” in free but not so fair elections.

What led to this?

Labour insiders have said the election was called when its polls were showing that there would be no “maġġoranza assoluta” over PN. The election had to be held after the Pope’s visit, not the week before. What we have observed in the weeks that followed was Labour out in full force trying to reach out to those who were thinking of abstaining from voting for one reason or another. Then the party took the power of incumbency to a whole new level – TVs, laptops, one-year internet subscriptions, jobs, hampers, berthing spots were among the freebies given out in the last two weeks of the campaign. Not to mention the cheques and other “bonuses” given by the government. The PN in this context was reduced to a third party. It could have never outdone the PL in its freebies.

Then we also got the PL’s feel-good concerts which ultimately saw artists (instead of sending the party in government to hell for the Covid double standards employed between partisan events and other art events) performing on a stage that was indirectly funded by the taxpayer. This time around, we had several people in receipt of gifts during the campaign posting freely to Facebook, without the police taking any action against treating – an offence during the electoral campaign.

The PN could never compete with this. It was a free election but not necessarily a fair one. This does not only apply to PN but also applies to the smaller parties.

If one had to analyse the PL’s campaign, apart from harping about its major pledges, the PL dedicated equal time to addressing the undecided voters and those who mulled on abstaining. Each speech always referred to “grievances” and then we got Abela telling us that we could go directly to him or Lydia Abela with our “grievances” as he promised solutions.

The Nationalist Party then side-lined corruption as one of its major issues despite being rife. By doing so, it also side-lined the MPs who had been most vocal about it. Instead of opting for the so-called bread and butter issues without addressing the elephant in the room – the Ukraine war and its impact, the ruling party’s short-sighted vision of spending in the short term without any regard to the future, and sending mixed messages.

Those who are still angry at PN’s previous administrations and its track record on the environment find it difficult to trust a party who tries to please both the environment lobby and the construction industry in the same breath.

Then there are the PN’s two souls that constantly find themselves pitted against each other – the conservative and the liberal one. Labour is not liberal, Labour uses liberal issues to achieve its goals and this is done by what the polls are saying. If Labour was liberal it would have never drafted and tabled the cyberbullying bill – which will serve to introduce criminal libel by another name. As an example we can take recreational cannabis: We can win 100s of votes with cannabis, then we give them recreational cannabis. We’re losing votes due to the cannabis legislation, so we do not mention it anymore – that was the reasoning employed.

Many have taken to Facebook to tell PN what to do. No one bothered telling PL what to do, despite the stories on Abela’s ODZ villa or Abela’s connections to the criminal underground, or seeking to absolve Rosianne Cutajar through an election. What we got was Joseph Muscat, Emmanuel Cuscheri and others who are angry at the PN for removing Adrian Delia speaking about cliques and elitism ad nauseam following the party’s loss.

No-one turned to the PL to tell it what to do next. No one demanded answers over things that came to light over the past months. No one demanded that the people in power, now with a nine-seat majority, behave better. No one took to task the Labour leader for refusing to sit down with independent media. While the Labour Party was busy complaining to editors about different journalists who asked thorny questions to their beloved leader.

Instead, we have an opposition party quickly but surely hitting the destruct button as it seeks to blame someone for the loss, without understanding the context in which this loss happened, and possibly heeding unsolicited advice from various quarters, who are not so many words are asking the PN to abandon the anti-corruption fight.

Repubblika did the right thing to sit out this election. It cannot be blamed for it.

There’s no party out there to save us. If the PN wants to work towards an electoral victory it should convince the people out there why it is a better option and decide on the issues which it wants to take up and take them up. If the majority is happy with the freebies, then that is what they want. What it can do is convince them why this is wrong and decide to fight back or leave.

Now, back to what led to this long-ish guest post. In this election, we saw those who within the Labour Party opposed Muscat being voted out bar two – Chris Fearne and Clifton Grima. As with Fearne, he enjoys a lot of popularity, however, the plan was always for him to be kicked upstairs.

Then two Opposition MPs did not make it to Parliament – Jason Azzopardi and Karol Aquilina – whose faces ended up on a PL billboard, and whom PN has hidden throughout the whole campaign, even though if you had to take a good look at the previous opposition parliamentary group – bar Aquilina, Azzopardi, Therese Comodini Cachia – you’d be lucky to squeeze out 500g of grey matter. The three of them also enjoy respect from the anti-corruption activists – something which the likes of Delia and others do not.

However, in the aftermath of the election when Aquilina and Azzopardi were not elected both through the PN’s own doing and with a little help from Labour, now we get all the experts urging them to bow out of politics. And one should look at the messengers this time round. What interests do the messengers have? Anyone who has done a campaign at least once in their life can see the coordinated and concentrated efforts all around us.

These concentrated efforts are not only aimed at the two candidates seeking election through casual elections which after all is their right – in our system the seat belongs to the candidate and not the party – but is also aimed at a cohort of anti-corruption activists whose strings cannot be pulled by either of the two parties, who are self-sufficient enough not to require government jobs, who have nothing to lose because they have made it in their lives, and who were wise enough to not touch the election with a barge pole.

What we have here is the mafia back at work – the mafia works in a climate where it is perceived not to exist. Eliminating the two most vocal voices in parliament on the anti-corruption fight and pleasing the Labour narrative is isolating them, and the activists. Funnily enough, some media were quickly picking up Facebook posts that would garner website hits and perpetuate the narrative. Others are busy throwing Facebook posts and going on about “elites, negativity or the establishment” and other stupid propaganda we have been fed throughout the last ten years. On one hand, you’ve got trolls pushing the narrative, on the other hand, you have those who genuinely believe it because it also suits them for whatever reason. One thing we must surely do is we must fight to ensure that Daphne Caruana Galizia’s work and sacrifice is not buried under a so-called fresh start for the Labour Party with the complacency of the Nationalist Party that is aspiring to win the next election as though it was some football match where you get a bunch of new players, while remaining the same party that fails to convince.

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Election22

Election22: The Solution

After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

The Solution: Bertolt Brecht

The election announced, the speculation begins. All forms of calculation are based on the ultimate constant: the rules of the game have not changed and ultimately the duocracy provides the only viable alternatives to electors. Anything else is offside.

Against all odds. The polls are unforgiving. Labour shall and will win. The question faced by those whose eyes have been opened is whether any credible opposition can be raised at this late stage. We will see different theories on the best ways to make opposition count. From the urgency of voting them out (vote PN) through the tired and illogical holding of the nose we will be presented with different reasons why voting PN is the only way to mitigate the onslaught of LabourAgain.

Even with the last minute purge of its undesirable parts the PN has failed miserably by turning up at the election as a loose collection of parts that is still committed to salvaging the system. Having been so close on numerous occasions to taking the leap into the unknown and transforming itself into a revolutionary party, the PN limits its odds to the quintessential “vote me for I am not Labour”.

We are still to see a commitment to the dismantling of the PLPN system that is necessary to rebuild the nation from scratch. It is only then that a vote for the Nationalist Party will mean anything more than simply voting in an alternative abuser of the system.

At this stage, with this kind of odds involved, the blank ballot becomes a powerful and attractive alternative. I strongly doubt we could ever reach the 83% level of blank ballot “terrorism” described in Saramago’s Seeing but the blank ballot is fast becoming the clearest form of protest vote of real opposition.

Unless a party provides a clear and unqualified commitment to a systemic overhaul the solution for those who are no longer blind can only be the blank ballot. Turn up to the polling booth and register your dissatisfaction with what is on offer by posting a blank ballot in the box.

Miegħek. Flimkien. Vot vojt.

“Casting a ballot is your irrevocable right, and no one will ever deny you that right, but just as you tell children not to play with matches, so we warn whole peoples of the dangers of playing with dynamite.”

José Saramago, Blindness
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Constitutional Development Rule of Law

Alarum! Inflation!

Households will experience the biggest fall in their living standards since records began as they face soaring inflation, tax increases and rising energy bills. In a bleak assessment of the year ahead, the Bank of England warned people that take-home pay would fall by five times the amount it did during the financial crisis of 2008. It will be the worst hit to real incomes since comparable records began in 1990.

Britons facing biggest drop in living standards – The Times

It’s a ticking time bomb and it is among us as we go about our daily lives. The warning signs are increasing daily and we ignore it at our peril. It is the result of a combination of a number of factors that might be contributing to speed up the countdown to D-Day and these factors include the pandemic, the energy crisis and the return of threats to global stability. The worst contributing factor, if not the main one, is the degeneration of liberal democracies and the proliferation of false republics.

The armageddon that I speak of is inflation. Not to be confused with a simple rise in prices, it is a possible breaking point, a crisis moment that will force a shift in the social paradigm.

Malta has already begun to feel the rumblings of the storm. Unable to operate in a vacuum the dangers of rising prices, increased energy bills and a general devaluation of the money in people’s pockets would spell disaster even in the case of a diligent government trying to navigate through the latest international crisis.

We have been there before. In 2008 the Gonzi government did manage to cushion the impact of a global financial crisis. Which did not mean that we did not emerge with a disgruntled business class. This time round we would do well to harbour strong doubts with regards to the capability of the Abela government to weather such a storm.

Here lies the problem. The Abela government inherited a system of governance that had already compromised the real republican constitution. An all-powerful executive hijacked the remaining pillars of the constitutional checks and balance denuding the system of any semblance of a republican charter based on the rule of law.

The compromised state is unable to generate any kind of policy beyond the populistic and is only able to plunder public funds for the benefit of the select few. The power of incumbency is used to maintain an illusion of normality notwithstanding the imminent signs of economic and social disaster.

Take the latest measure announced of distributing 200 or 100 euro cheques as one-off compensation for the damage caused by the pandemic. At an estimated 70 million euros this measure falls far short of creating a clear far-sighted policy to weather the impact of the incoming storm. Instead it is a temporary distraction for the population.

What we are facing is a collapse in living standards. The price hike will be the last thing on our minds compared to the devaluation of take-home pay, rising energy bills and rising cost of living. There will be a limit to the number of times the government chooses to plunder public money.

The real question is: how long before the anger spills to the streets? How long before partisan loyalty no longer suffices to blindfold citizens from the real effects of a faltering economy? How long before they realise that the institutional rape of our state has left our country exposed to the elements?

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Rule of Law

Justyne’s Double Standards

The Commissioner for Standards in Public Life is one of the feathers in the Labour government’s cap. The role forms part of the much trumpeted measures introduced to improve the Rule of Law in Malta. Or so we are told.

My guess is that Justyne Caruana (a lawyer by profession) voted along with the rest of the labour MPs to enact what would become Chapter 570 of the laws of Malta at the time. She had no objections whatsoever on the role and functioning of the Commissioner.

Funny how times change…..

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Constitutional Development Politics

The Government Spokesperson

““Incongruous, out of line and condemnable”. The government reaction to the insipid insinuation by Labour stalwart, deposed mayor Anthony DeGiovanni was left to a “government spokesperson” who was fielding questions from the press. DeGiovanni had appeared on a radio programme earlier and repeated a Labour troll’s favourite concerning the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Matthew, Daphne’s son, was somehow to blame for the “mistake” of parking the family car outside the house leaving it exposed to possible assassins and their bomb planting ways. DeGiovanni comes from the same school of crap-spewing sewage producers as Mario Azzopardi who also this week inveighed against Robert Abela for having begrudgingly declared his support of Roberta Metsola’s EP Presidency candidature.

Coming as they did on the wave of the latest poll results indicating a swell of support for Labour, DeGiovanni’s comments are a good example of the kind of swill that feeds the masses. The same kind of swill that is provoked by Abela’s nationalistic comments with regards to Roberta Metsola. These “tropes for trolls” are woven through repetition and mass reproduction while being given undeserved space on the media.

Tellingly, the condemnation of DeGiovanni’s wild insinuations only come as a reaction to further press inquiry and not as an instinctive calling into line. Furthermore the condemnation is in the form of the anonymous spokesperson with no further repercussion seemingly on the horizon. DeGiovanni remains a 72 year old junior lawyer appointed to the public payroll by his daughter notwithstanding his history of unreliability as a public servant.

One last remark concerns the subject that led to DeGiovanni’s baseless assertions. The discussion concerned the calls for resignation of Anglu Farrugia, Speaker of Malta’s House of Representatives. Matthew Caruana Galizia, among others, had called for the bumbling buffoon to resign following his latest contribution to the neutering of the power of the House. Much like a government spokespersons sterile “condemnation”, Farrugia had informed Rosianne Cutajar of a decision that she be reprimanded without following through with the reprimand itself.

These are our institutions at work. Alas the filthy hand of a poisoned faculty that keeps churning half-baked lawyers can be seen once again in the latest series of events. Speaking of which, the theory by law-chitect Musumeci whereby any decision concerning justice should be left to the people remains strong among the Labourite community. Rule by law of the majority continues to threaten our constitutional set up.

It is a theory and system that goes against everything that democratic representation through a system of checks and balances should be about. It flies in the face of the very roots of what law is about and is a recipe for the total annihilation of our fledgling liberal democracy.

We are servants of the law so that we may be free. For how long?

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