As an independent commentator on the Maltese scene, I am not in the business of scoring political points or wearing my political views on my sleeve. My task is to provide informed and constructive criticism and commentary, and to cajole and if necessary to hassle those who have the power to make decisions affecting our lives.
The objective is to influence people’s views and opinions as responsibly and constructively as possible. I write this by way of a preamble because I know that as Malta gears up for the next election in a few months’ time I am entering the minefield of Maltese politics.
Four years after his landslide victory in the general election, the shine has gone off Joseph Muscat’s promises. It has been a roller coaster period of undoubted economic achievements and some of the worst governance and administration that I have witnessed in the last two decades.
The issue which has dominated politics for the last year was the Panama Papers scandal. Muscat set his face against any talk of resignation by Konrad Mizzi on the spurious grounds that nothing technically wrong had been proven. His chief of staff, Keith Schembri, too remains in post on the specious basis that his is “a position of trust”.
The Prime Minister has mishandled the Panamagate debacle. The issue will haunt him throughout the forthcoming election campaign on which the battle lines of good governance versus good stewardship of the economy appear already to be drawn.
Where do I stand on the “corruption” farrago? First, the Prime Minister should have demanded the resignation of Mizzi and Schembri the moment the Panama Papers were released. If a minister has misledParliament, as Mizzi appears to have done, accountability for it must be his responsibility.
And if the minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff misled the Prime Minister, they should resign. A Prime Minister who did not oblige them to do so is also culpable.
Respect for ethical standards in a parliamentary democracy is the glue that holds the whole edifice of trust together.
Second, it follows that simply ‘demoting’ Mizzi and retaining Schembri because he fills a ‘position of trust’ is pure Jesuitical sophistry. Nobody in any government is indispensable and Muscat is paying a massive price for supposing otherwise.
But, third, which matters in the whole saga are “proven” or “not proven”? The accusation that Mizzi and Schembri failed to declare that they had opened financial vehicles in Panama and New Zealand without informing the Maltese authorities as required under Maltese law is proven.
Fourth, the allegation that the third company formed by Nexia BT belongs to the Prime Minister is not proven and demeans those who allege it without providing solid proof to the contrary.
Simon Busuttil should pause and ask himself where his street politics may be leading and whether a return to the 1980s is genuinely what he wishes to achieve
Fifth, the allegation of money laundering is not proven.
It behoves all those who bandy accusations of wrongdoing without proof to respect common justice under the rule of law. Although there is circumstantial evidence to be deeply suspicious of possible mal-intent, suspicion alone has never been the basis of proof and it ill-serves the leader of the Opposition to convict without adducing proof. Simon Busuttil has collaborated with the blogger in creating a crescendo of rumour and innuendo that has been more poisonous than the truth.
As a lawyer and as a politician supposedly standing on a platform of probity and honesty in public life, Busuttil should set the bar high in establishing the burden of proof. That he is at the receiving end of similar unproven accusations over db Group-gate is indeed ironic. In a mature democracy what should matter is solid evidence. Sadly, in Maltese politics, nuance and accuracy do not sell. Plumbing ever-lower depths does.
For both party leaders, turning up the volume with wild accusations that deepen further national polarisation appears desirable. The worse, the better. But there is a grave danger that by doing so Malta is losing the most basic of decencies. Both sides endlessly portray their opponents not as people with whom they disagree on policy, but as villains and the language of discourse becomes increasingly more inflammatory.
Where once a premium used to be placed on the quality of an argument, today things are increasingly reduced solely to a question of who is saying it. Yet, in a mature democracy, it is necessary for responsible leaders to keep drawing a line between meaningful and confected debate.
The question during the forthcoming electoral campaign is whether Busuttil, a decent but rather callow Opposition leader, will follow down the same path of making hollow promises to the electorate in his bid to win ‘at the auction of popularity’. There are already worrying signs of this.
The key problem seems to be that Busuttil cannot spot a bandwagon without jumping on it. The fact that the bandwagon has been created by a notorious blogger whose judgment is tarnished by her unbalanced anti-Labour tunnel vision does not worry him or any member of the shadow cabinet. When they slavishly follow the agenda set by the blogger, they are simply engaging in echo chamber politics. Echo chamber politics is when a party is talking to itself. There are about 133,000 Nationalist supporters who will vote PN come hell or high water. At the present time, Busuttil’s tactics tend only to reinforce the Nationalist core vote. If he is to get back into power the members of the electorate he has to persuade are the 18,000 or so ‘switchers’ who deserted his party for Labour at the last election.
But to do so Busuttil has to appeal for support beyond PN core voters. The myriad articles in this newspaper by aspiring Nationalist candidates, writing earnestly and loyally parroting the party’s “line to take”, is echo chamber politics.
The poorly argued articles by shadow ministers – of which the shadow minister for justice’s misleading ‘A money laundering centre’ of March 3 is an egregious case – are examples of echo chamber politics. They may be satisfyingly cathartic to those who are believers in the party’s agenda, but do not really advance their cause.
Busuttil’s antics when he asks his party to take to the streets, as he did recently in Valletta when about 3,000 core supporters worked themselves up into a lather about “corruption”, is echo chamber politics.
But worse, it is bad and dangerous politics. In a country where memories of street violence during the 1980s are still raw, does Busuttil really believe that the institutions of a democratic state – the House of Representatives, the European Parliament which is conducting an inquiry into the Panama Papers, the judiciary and regulatory powers – have been so suborned by government as to require his people to revert to street demonstrations and civil disobedience?
The next election in Malta will be dominated by the corruption versus economic success argument. But overriding these issues, it will be about the qualities of Malta’s next prime minister: Muscat or Busuttil. Politics is not just about policy or behaviour. It is about character.
Busuttil should pause and ask himself where his street politics may be leading and whether a return to the 1980s is genuinely what he wishes to achieve – undermining the rebuilding so patiently begun by Eddie Fenech Adami 30 years ago.