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Seize the moment

This article first appeared on The Shift News on 10.12.2019.

Sunday afternoon turned out to be quite surreal. As the sun began to set on The Eternal City, I stood at the top of the Spanish steps looking down on a huge crowd of people gathered to follow the Pope’s Immacolata procession.

At that precise moment, some 650km away (as the ravenflies) another crowd was beginning to assemble. Unlike the papal crowd, the crowd at Castille Square was calling for justice and accountability. They wanted the man who obstinately clings to the seat of power to let go immediately.

Only the previous day, that man had brazenly been to visit the Pope. Undoubtedly, this was part of his ‘business as usual’ charade: the same charade that would continue on Sunday with his ‘farewell tour’ surrounded by those after his sullied throne.

Since the precipitation of events (to put it mildly) drew Castille’s occupants into circle upon circle of Dantesque damnation, the government’s effort to ‘minimise the fuss’ has multiplied. There has yet to be responsibility assumed for the mess.

Sure, we have seen resignations. They are not the kind of submission to authority that you would expect, though. Rather, those resigning are fêted as heroes. Chiefs of Staff “move on“, Ministers reaffirm their dedication to the cause and the project — and we must be the only country where a Prime Minister mired in corruption and abuse of power is on the road to beatification.

The way the government and backbenchers have rallied behind Muscat can only be described as the thickness of thieves. Each day of denial rendered every one of them complicit in the institutional abuse and cover-up.

Yet, the growing wave of discontent is now clear for all to see. Beyond the Potemkin village meetings that Muscat and friends can orchestrate among the flag-waving diehards lies a brave new world that is gathering momentum and courage. It is a disparate agglomeration of individuals still in search of a leading voice.

Theirs has been an uphill struggle. First came the ‘early adopters’ who, from the start, realised that something was rotten in the state of Denmark.

Then came the angry crowd who had understood that this was not a government for the people by the people, and they had a reason to complain that it was not right.

Last came the doubting Thomas’ who could only be swayed with the ever so deceptive ‘proof’. For the first time in the history of this young nation, a political movement of strange bedfellows was born out of the realisation that the Old Republic was no longer a servant of the people.

Yes, as part of the learning curve in civil action, at every step we had to stress that this was not a political movement (political with a small p as in ‘partisan’). Yes, we had to overcome the mutual diffidence and suspicions of underlying agendas. The remarkable nature of the moment lies in the fact that the overwhelming consensus within the movement of change is that change must come without the political (with a small p) parties. It must happen despite them.

We are a few steps away from understanding that this could be a defining moment constitutionally for our republic. At this stage, the eyes of people from different ideological backgrounds are open. They understand (for different reasons) that our Constitution, and hence our State, is paralysed by conflicting interests.

For some, it is ‘the businessmen’. For others, it is the parties that abuse their power. For others still, it is the lack of certainty. The next step is for all the forces contributing to this wave of anger at the establishment that has let us down to accept that it is the whole system that needs a reboot – beyond the different ideologies.

Prepare the ground for a constitutional reform within which the different ideologies and projects for the country’s future may find fertile ground to debate and grow. A project that returns politics to the normal, boring politics — but one with a capital ‘P’.

Those who expect this change to come from within one of our stagnant parties have still not read the writing on the wall. They will try to operate within the same constitutional constraints that the parties have abused since the birth of the republic.

The latest surveys show that the Labour Party still leads the PN at the polls, but it has not gained in popularity. Rather, it seems to be losing support. The PN has practically not budged in a situation where it should have been benefiting from the anger as the Party in opposition. I do not read these signs negatively. The loss of the two-Party support is our nation’s gain.

The country needs real leaders. Individuals who can guide this movement through this bumpy phase. It must not, and will not, stop at justice for the corrupt. It must also proceed to lay the foundations for the new republic.

Seize the moment.

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Whispering a revolution

This article first appeared on the Shift news.

In May 2017 I co-founded a group called the Advocates for the Rule of Law. We took out a full-page advert on The Times of Malta in which we announced vacancies for the proper functioning of democracy. That was the beginning of a brief campaign in which we raised the alarm that the backsliding of the Rule of Law in Malta had taken a fast turn.

The Rule of Law as a concept is hard to sell. Harder still when all the signs of backsliding are happening at a time when the nation is buoyed by a false sense of confidence, itself boosted by the income from questionable economic policies.

It is even harder when you factor in the tribal rivalries, antipathies and mutual mistrust that pervade the socio-political scene. Attribution of ulterior motive to any criticism is just one aspect of the strong counter-information propaganda machines.

Sadly, we did not manage to get our message across. The majority opted to confirm the status quo. The scenes of hundreds of government supporters celebrating on the doorsteps of Pilatus Bank right after the election results were symbolic of the failure to get the people to understand what the backsliding of the rule of law was about.

You cannot start a revolution so long as the main victims of the status quo remain oblivious to its consequences. All change begins with grievances that are first thought in silence (and fear) and then whispered gradually in the streets and in the markets.

So long as these grievances are not felt, all explanations concerning backsliding remain technical. So long as the overwhelming partisan sentiment is exploited in an ‘Us vs Them’ rhetoric then discussions on the need for change remain technical.

The rotten State

The ulcer grew into a tumour at an astounding rate, despite the blatant unmeritocratic nominations to ‘positions of trust’ and despite the increasing suspicion in major deals on hospitals, the power station, and property transactions contracted without any effort of accountability and transparency.

It got worse despite the increasing amount of information patiently collected by the part of the Fourth Estate that still functions – those journalists and investigators picking up where the captured authorities failed. It got worse despite the brutal assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The alarm bells remained silent.

A culture of fear had been instilled in a segment of the population – fear from retribution. Where there was no fear there was confusion. The official opposition was in tatters – it, too, a victim of institutional capture.

This is not a partisan call. It is a call across society to win back what is ours

The heritage that the PN carries is one of perennially closing an eye to the warning signs that the system off which it feeds is sick and damaging the nation. Even the most rebellious elements within the PN still fail to understand that the change needed includes a ‘partisan-ectomy – the PN itself must ‘die’.

The last years of institutional erosion have been characterised by a weak system finally submitting to the ultimate abuse. The Executive, Parliament and the Judiciary became the playground for an all-out assault on democratic functionality.

All the while, the last vestiges of possible watchdog activity were being silenced – first clumsily with a flurry of libel activity then brutally with a brutal assassination.

The law courts became the battleground where fake news and propaganda met institutional inadequacy. The police force and all other investigators were effectively neutered by heightened political intervention. Long-drawn libel suits extended a lifeline of superficial credibility to government positions. We are only now seeing the futility of the exercise as suit after suit is dropped.

The penny began to drop.

Magisterial inquiries are bandied about in a protracted game of inconclusiveness. Muscat’s government has not had one clear judgment in its favour – only a series of dropped libel cases, stalled inquiries and unpublished results.

We have only just begun to scratch the surface of the Vitals deal, the Electrogas deal, the Panama Papers data (including the slippery eel that is Egrant) and more, much more. Every public contract needs to be scrutinised – yet with institutional meltdown, this becomes an impossible task. Or not.

‘Talkin’ bout a revolution’

This brings me back to the whispers on the streets. The streets are where change can begin to happen. The same streets that voted in huge numbers in 2013 to bring about a change for the better against what was finally perceived as a rotting administration.

The same streets are slowly waking up to the dark reality that they have been lied to. That the ‘Best of Times’ is a lie. The message that we tried to relay three years ago is now writing itself.

Fulfilling Tracy Chapman’s words, the whispers of revolution are out on the street. There is only so far that people can accept to be deceived. It is the people who must now take the lead – demand what is theirs. This is not a partisan call. It is a call across society to win back what is ours.

The divide is between those who have the nation at heart and those who are tied to the slippery race for power and money

No amount of technical explanation will be better than the real tangible experiences of life. As Immanuel Mifsud puts it in L-Aqwa Zmien (my translation):

“When the last echoes of a politician’s emotional speech dwindle into nothing; when the marathon programmes close; when the last ever-rising graph stops and the financial expert has the last smile… somewhere, someone will be closing the garage door to fall asleep; someone will have to leave his home; someone else begins to be abused; and there will be someone who is losing his life uselessly.” .

Last week’s peaceful protests in Valletta were another step in this struggle. Parliamentarians of goodwill, who hold the interest of the people at heart, would do well to follow this call. There are no longer any Nationalist or Labour politicians – the divide is between those who have the nation at heart and those who are tied to the slippery race for power and money.