“I am the State.” I was reminded of Louis XIV’s boast as I was following the live broadcast of the May Day mass meeting in Valletta. Labour’s image consultants had once again struck gold: the party leader who had just called a snap general election was not framed by any old backdrop, but by the sombre majesty of the Office of the Prime Minister itself.
Behind Joseph Muscat the door of this baroque palace was open, as if its occupant had just popped out to speak to the gathering crowds and would then go back to his natural habitat. No other incumbent in Malta’s political history has had the sheer audacity to call a general election wreathed in such a visual metaphor of entitlement.
The intended message was crystal clear: the government and the party are one. And since Muscat owns the Labour Party body and soul, the narrative unfolds with mathematical inevitability: the government and party leader are also one. Muscat’s victory is inevitable. He will rule again, and we will never grow hungry again.
This is the true meaning of the presidential-style ‘choice’ between Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil that the Labour Party is pushing. But this false choice is profoundly anti-democratic. True presidential-style democracies such as the US and France work well because they are underpinned by a strong State (apart from a genuinely independent media and civil society) whose institutions provide solid checks and balances to the power of the victorious politician.
Yet since 2013, Malta has witnessed the systematic dismantling of the autonomy, independence and integrity of most major State institutions. The public service has been decapitated and cowed. The selection process of its senior personnel has been reduced to a partisan or nepotistic mockery. The police leadership is a running joke, a succession of incompetents or cowards. And the less said about the army leadership the better.
We desperately need a return to sanity and decency. Instead we got an early election
The Broadcasting Authority was until recently lumped with a chair so manifestly unsuited that she has the distinction of being the only head of a State-funded entity ever to be hounded out by her own employees. The Planning Authority is busy with its creatively shambolic interpretations of its own ever-changing regulations to suit the pro-government fat cats.
The Electoral Commission is hamstrung without control over ID cards, and now is forced to use an electoral register the correctness of which it cannot guarantee. Identity Malta, one of many ‘independent’ entities full of political appointees, has not shaken off strong accusations of multiple irregularities over the issue of ID cards and passports.
This crumbling of the State has allowed partisan opportunism, nepotism and petty personal ambition to flourish. Meritocracy and due process have withered away. But there is an altogether more sinister side to this siege of the State.
The director of the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit is said to have resigned because the police would not take action on the unit’s recommendation one year ago to start a criminal investigation on Brian Tonna and Keith Schembri. Neither did the Attorney General, who received the same information at the same time. Yet Magistrate Aaron Bugeja agreed that a criminal investigation was necessary after just one week of considering what apparently are the same facts.
In the whole Panama/Pilatus Bank mess, the stink of tax evasion, trading in influence, corruption and money-laundering at the highest levels is becoming more and more pronounced. Yet when faced with the political humiliation of an impending criminal investigation, Schembri has refused to resign and Prime Minister Muscat has refused to remove him.
The increasing conviction is that the State has not just been crumbling due to politically blinkered action. It has been dismantled to facilitate personal greed. The public is starting to suspect that the confidentiality statutes of the various State regulatory entities are not facilitating due diligence, but are hiding negligence or worse.
Malta’s democracy is in serious jeopardy. And that’s without mentioning the catastrophic effect that the loss of international confidence in Malta’s financial services will have on our economic survival as a nation.
We desperately need a return to sanity and decency. Instead we got an early election by a Prime Minister trying to escape the mills of God.
Run rabbit run
Ode to delinquent mediocrity dedicated to Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar:
Oh, cruel spotlight in the hands of Fate
That shines on the Commiss’ner’s hapless pate;
The selfsame tune that mocked the Opposition
Now highlights his ridiculous position.
He contemplates his badge with slackened jaw
The rabbit stew fermenting in his craw;
And thinks: “how can I tell the Maltese people
That it was that or hanging from a steeple?
“I have a family, a sweet collection;
No time for extrasensory perception.
I go to work each day and shift the papers;
No time to heed the liars and the haters.
Let others risk their lives and play the heroes;
I get my cheque and slowly count the zeros.”
But when he’s shaving, in the mirror there
He sees a face that’s crumbling in despair.