The press conference called by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Education Minister Evarist Bartolo has been described by journalists scrabbling for its raison d’être as strange and surreal. Kind words for plain weird.
A cryptic conference set in a near-crypt, with a well-preserved Pullicino Orlando rambling about his ghosts and pet banshee; a self-styled liberal minister, his reputation undead, giving his views about the Church’s sacramental life; and the third of the advertised speakers gone missing.
All we needed was Shaggy and Scooby-Doo. Or Tintin and Snowy. Or just Salvu Mallia and his sausage dog, Lautrec.
Still, the event raised a question worth answering. Is Malta more liberal today than it was, say, seven years ago?
Pullicino Orlando and Bartolo evidently think so. They’d like some of the credit, given their role in campaigning for a divorce law back in 2011. But what little evidence they gave is weak.
The divorce referendum victory did not produce a more liberal society. It simply confirmed something long declared by others – that a majority demanding more liberal laws existed. This column, for example, had said as much in 2008, just a week after Joseph Muscat became Labour leader, adding that the pent-up demand would shape the politics of the following five years.
It was a no-brainer. All you had to do was look at the changing demographics and behavioural statistics. It took calculation, not courage, to promise more liberal policies. I even predicted that if Muscat portrayed the Labour-Nationalist divide as a liberal-conservative one, he’d win power comfortably. I’m not waiting for the Prix Nostradamus.
And it’s irrelevant that the Maltese Catholic bishops have taken a new pastoral approach towards divorcees (full participation in the sacraments, under spiritual guidance, is now permitted). This turn is due to the lead given by Pope Francis, not Pullicino Orlando, and the ethical approach has its roots in early Christianity, predating liberalism by a millennium and a half.
Odd as it may seem, it is the Church’s former legalistic approach – bureaucratic, impersonal, emphasising rules and individual choice, and inclined to overlook context – that has greater similarities to liberalism proper. But it only seems odd because of the frequent confusion of liberalism with a warm, fuzzy, non-judgemental free-for-all, while the former pastoral approach was seen as cold and judgemental.
There certainly is something perversely cold when the Catechism is treated as an acquis communautaire (the Church is not a state or a club; its commandments are not legal but ethical; it exists to foster deeply personal relationships based on truth; and context is everything for existential truth). But firm clear rules, impersonally and impartially applied, are nice to have in a state, everyone treated as equal under the law.
It is this kind of state that liberalism exists to protect. Historically, it arose to protect individuals against religious bigotry – coldly impartial guarantees against hot religious violence. Nowadays, it exists to protect individuals against a wider raft of prejudice in the community, from racism and sexism to homophobia and disability.
Malta was never quite a fully-fledged liberal state. But the effect of the last four years has been to take us even further away from the liberal order’s ideal of dispersed power and rule of law
Liberalism is concerned primarily with the state and individuals, not society as such. Asking if Malta is today a more liberal society is misleading, as the search for a liberal society is always a chase after a chimera.
France, the Netherlands and the UK are liberal states while their societies are only partly liberal. In France and Holland, far-right leaders are on the brink of historic electoral success. In the UK, the Brexit vote was accompanied by a spike of racist incidents. Virtually every European country has political movements or regional parties built on communal bigotry; while their major cities are awash with sectarian and ethnic tensions and accusations of institutionalised prejudice.
Nonetheless, most European states may be described as liberal. They have laws and institutional processes designed to protect individuals against prejudice. They offer redress to those who suffer it.
These states will stop being liberal if their laws are changed to accommodate prejudice or else if the rule of law is weakened. Hence the anxiety about the likes of Donald Trump: not so much that he is a bigoted liar (the White House has seen several such occupants) but that he will undermine the US Constitution.
The liberal state is nothing if not judgemental. It holds certain truths about human rights to be self-evident, irrespective of custom and belief. Anything that contradicts those truths is pronounced bigoted.
It is cold in protecting freedom of speech – even disturbing others and giving offence is permitted (with exceptions made only to protect freedom of conscience). Liberal governments do not harass or snipe at journalists – hence the concern when Donald Trump’s official spokesman picked a fight with the media at his very first press conference.
Liberalism is cold about power. Distrustful of anyone who wields it, the liberal state has power dispersed between autonomous institutions. Powers are separated: judges from politics; backbench parliamentarians from the governments they’re supposed to hold to account; governments from the police...
And, for the same end, it strictly distinguishes the private and the public. Often, this is taken to be a euphemism for protecting the privacy of family and sexual life. But it’s about a lot more than that. It protects the whole of our private life, including our communications and personal beliefs. And it also protects public life and public goods – the most liberal states are also the ones with the most pronounced sense and protection of public property. The public interest is reflected in their laws.
Such are the pillars of the liberal order. Within it, some political parties might agitate for more or fewer civil liberties, greater or fewer egalitarian measures. So some parties might be considered liberal in a special sense, while others are called conservative, or social-democrat or whatever. But the liberal pillars are taken as a basic foundation by all mainstream parties.
Where does that leave Malta today as distinct from Malta in 2010?
In a manifestly less liberal place, with the basic pillars greatly weakened. Yes, we have a better censorship law (although it was still possible to find redress against potty censorship before). Yes, our marriage and civil union laws are now better able to address the actual sexual landscape.
But those advances in the realm of the private sphere have occurred while extensive damage was being done to the foundations of a liberal order and its institutions.
Panamagate, among other corruption scandals, shows there is no rule of law and no public accountability. The government is opaque, with the freedom of information law a dead letter.
We have had more police commissioners in the last four years than in the previous 25. The current incumbent publicly praised the Prime Minister’s illegal, illiberal attempt to push back African migrants in the summer of 2013 – only to be promoted to head the police immigration division six months later.
The lines between the Labour Party, the government, the judiciary and the legislative branch have been erased. Public-private partnerships have come to mean private interests taking over government. No public good is safe from private, even anonymous, takeover.
Government surveillance of its private citizens – as measured by official requests made to entities like Facebook – are out of all proportion to those made by other western European states.
And virtually anyone in the press who chooses to point any of the above out can expect to be selected for special mockery and attention in the blog run by one of the Prime Minister’s communication advisors.
Malta was never quite a fully-fledged liberal state. But the effect of the last four years – of deregulation coupled with the centralisation of decision-making, of the weakening of the autonomy of institutions and the personalisation of power – has been to take us even further away from the liberal order’s ideal of dispersed power and rule of law.
ranierfsadni@europe.com