Muscat’s party has got itself into all of a tizzy about whistleblowing and criminal prosecutions and other high-sounding concepts.

Let’s kill off the first one, about whistleblowing.

In the real world, having a Whistle Blower Act in place, while necessary and while it’s not necessarily a good thing that there was procrastination about it, is not the be-all and end-all of the fight against corruption. In the first place, it applies in favour mostly of employees and to that extent, there’s already quite a hefty piece of protection in place, in the Employment & Industrial Relations Act, brought into effect back in 2002/3, and in the second place, unless whistleblowers are protected in more fundamental ways, not many people are about to stick their necks out, Act or no Act.

And I’m not talking about people who might not want to find themselves in the limelight, either, I’m talking about the people who might be scared of physical retribution – criminals don’t hold back from wielding a nifty base-ball bat because some sanctimonious politician has put a Whistle Blower Act in place, and let’s not have any twaddle about Witness Protection Programmes, either, we live on an island about three metres by three metres where everyone knows anyone else.

So, while I say again, stronger whistle blower protection isn’t a bad thing in itself, and the PN have already undertaken to bring it in, it’s not the solution to everything that less than rigorously disciplined brains have trumpeted that it is. So can we have less whining about it, then?

Then there’s the heroic fight against prescription that Muscat seems to have embarked on, for all the world as if he had donned shiny white armour and got onto Rosinante.

In fact, his own Sancho Panza, Manwel Mallia, has already caused a few leaks to be sprung in the hull of this particular fighting vessel, because he’s doubtful, skilled practitioner at the Criminal Bar that he is, that you can go back all that far and have prescription in criminal matters removed. From a total amateur’s point of view, which is not precisely but almost what I am in the art of criminal law, it is a pretty clear that a crime is judged on the basis of the law as it stood at the time the offence was committed, and this includes the matter of prescription. Not that I agree that time-barring (which is what prescription is, so as not to use a long word) is necessarily a good idea without reservation, but the rights of the accused can’t be sacrificed on the altar of political point-scoring.

So can we have less whining about it, then?

Trawling the blogs, as one does, I came across some comments about how ironic it was that when Dr Austin Gatt was having a chat with the fuzz about the Enemalta affair, he had the right to a lawyer during the interrogation through the efforts of the very one who had brought him down.

This is nothing short of a downright lie: persons under interrogation only have the right to consult a lawyer, and then only by phone unless the Legal Beagle happens to be hanging around Police GHQ, before the interrogation starts. During the cordial tete-a-tete that the constabulary desire, lawyers are not allowed in and in fact, most lawyers worth their salt tell their possibly-nefarious clients not to contact them before an interrogation, because of the rule of inference that has been brought in. If you consult a lawyer and clam up during your chat with the Plod, this can be used against you. If you don’t, it can’t.

So, bottom-line, this so-called “right to having a lawyer present” is nothing more or less than non-existent and anyone who takes credit for it is taking credit for what can only be called a lie.

So can we have less whining about it, then?

Just as a slightly connected aside on which to close, it is a lie, even if stated under oath, incidentally, that I am directed by the PN whenever some sort of hatchet job is required on anyone. I have been told that some intrepid so-called journalist told it “like it is” under oath in a libel case, mentioning me by name. I will be getting a transcript of the evidence and taking steps (tremble, why don’t you?) if this is the case, because it is a lie, pure and simple and people who tell lies are liars. When they tell them under oath, they are criminal liars.