When I wrote about ‘the untruth game’, for which the national broadcasting became a champion back in the 1980s, I hoped that the country would eventually not only let the truth prevail but also look upon it as a liberating force.
What is happening right now in Malta is even worse than anything that occurred throughout the dismal 1980s. The present government is following one basic strategy: persist in outright lies, and the people will either believe those lies or at least get tired of trying to untangle the complex web which government and Labour Party spokespersons keep weaving and simply give up.
One has only to listen to the repeated claim that Minister Konrad Mizzi was ‘disciplined’. That explains why the Labour Party is going through a new election for a deputy leader.
The fact that he was asked to step down from his party position but given a promotion to act as minister within the Office of the Prime Minister is one of the most callous insults that we could have been dealt: unfit for the party but more than fit for government.
Equally, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff remains in office.
But the jigsaw piece simply does not fit any more.
It has been revealed that when Dr Mizzi applied to set up a secret company in Panama, he did not tick the appropriate box to indicate that the intention was to administer his property. That is what the Panama Papers indicate, but the minister sent a statement to the press that suggests otherwise.
He must be the first person to have been mentioned in the Panama Papers and to possess a paper that is not part of those papers. I have heard of a non-paper paper in diplomatic circles, but Dr Mizzi’s version must be the ultimate antidote to investigative whistle-blowers and journalists.
Why on earth did Cheng Chenneed the same financial advisor as Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri to acquire a secret company?
To threaten to proceed against journalists on this basis is to intimate to the free media that they might just as well stop quoting from the Panama Papers, since he can un-hack documents that tell a different story.
Presumably, this time round he could not tell us that an unticked box should be read as ticked. But why couldn’t he? Only a few days earlier we were told that the phrase “He set up the practice and developed major accounts with personal revenue amounting to £5m [€6.4 million]” should be understood as “with revenue in favour of the company”, even if that sentence was the conclusion of his source of funds declaration.
From what has evolved over the past week, what should worry us most is that now we know that the intermediary, who after the general election set up a secret company for himself, another for Dr Mizzi and a third for Keith Schembri, also provided his services to Cheng Chen, who belonged to a consultancy firm engaged by Shanghai Electric to expand into Malta.
Why on earth did Cheng Chen need the same financial advisor as Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri to acquire a secret company in the British Virgin Islands after the last general election?
Do we have a right to ask? Any self-respecting journalist will stand up for the truth. Professional journalism is about providing information and engaging citizens in a public discourse to safeguard democracy.
I am confident that attempts at intimidation will be met with a stronger resolve to protect freedom of expression and the European values which we cherish, even if that will at any stage require any one of us having to have recourse to the European Court of Human Rights.
Labour ultimately rose to power through a strategy of deceit from day one, when it promised an open, transparent government that would pertain to all Maltese alike. What a lie!
The words of Peter Oborne in his book The Rise of Political Lying come to mind: “It may well be the case... that lying can help a politician attain power. But it hampers him from exercising it. For once the victims of lies realise they have been duped, they feel let down and betrayed. They become cynical, impervious to fresh assurances.”
Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MP.