At first, the case of Jason Azzopardi’s tweet about Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, seems to be a matter of all MPs taking themselves far too seriously. In fact, by combining the elements of tragedy and farce, it should command the attention of everyone – you, me, stand-up comics and human rights lawyers.
For if you support Azzopardi, you’ll find yourself wishing he’ll go to jail. If you sympathise with Bonnici, you’ll wish he will somehow contrive to lose his case against Azzopardi before his reputation is damaged even further and irreparably.
And if you’re someone who simply wishes to live in a normal free society, you will need to toss a coin to decide whether to laugh or weep. Our venerable Speaker of the House, Anġlu Farrugia, has ruled in a manner that flatly contradicts the line taken by other speakers presiding over parliaments based on a system like ours.
The bare facts, first. Last month, Azzopardi tweeted that Bonnici “lied 2 Parliament” over an answer he gave – in March 2015 – to a parliamentary committee regarding the commissions earned by Henley & Partners, the hawkers peddling Maltese passports around the world.
Bonnici made a breach of privilege complaint to the Speaker – meaning that Azzopardi had abused the special freedom of expression he enjoys as an MP (roughly, the privilege to make claims within Parliament while enjoying immunity from being sued).
The Speaker found in favour of Bonnici – saying that what the latter stated in March 2015 should be understood in the light of a separate answer he gave three months later (yes, indeed) and requested Azzopardi to withdraw his comment. Azzopardi refused, arguing the facts are incontrovertible.
It’s a ruling that sets Malta down a path leading in a reverse direction from the free world. We should have enough self-respect to be disturbed by that
Therefore the matter is now on its way to be heard before a parliamentary committee where the government has a majority. If it finds against Azzopardi, and he still refuses to relent, he could even find himself slapped with a jail sentence.
So far, no one has challenged the claim that what Bonnici said in March last year was not true, nor has anyone argued that he did not know the truth at the time. The issue turns over his saying that Bonnici is a liar.
Given the accusation was made in a tweet, Bonnici could sue Azzopardi in court if he wanted. Instead, he took the matter to Farrugia, who forwarded the matter to a committee, where Labour has a majority of members, which will be judge and jury.
Where does that leave Azzopardi? On a fast track to political martyrdom and hero status.
Some years ago, during the run-up to the EU referendum, the anti-EU Campaign for National Independence invited the Eurosceptic former Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont to address one of its meetings, chaired by the former Labour prime minister, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici. At the end of his speech, Lamont was asked whether he realised that, had he given his talk when the chairman beside him was prime minister, he would have risked being imprisoned for ‘political interference’ in national affairs.
Lamont, whose political career never recovered after he was sacked as chancellor in 1993, didn’t bat an eyelid: “Oh, I dare say a stab in a Maltese jail would have done my career some good.”
And it would do Azzopardi’s career a wealth of good. He would leave jail with a landslide re-election reassured on any district he chooses. Even if he spent a day in jail.
Bonnici, on the other hand, comes out looking rather the worse for this. He is the minister who has long courted the press on matters of freedom of expression. He has let journalists know he would like the law permitting jail terms for libel struck down.
Yet, here he is pursuing a fellow politician with the threat of a jail term. Worse, he’s not even doing this in the courts but in a forum where the judge and jury is made up, in its majority, of his fellow Labour MPs.
There’s more than a little irony in the fact that if Bonnici had let Azzopardi’s tweet pass, few would have noted it. And those who did would mainly have put it down to partisan hyperbole. Instead, the newspapers now need to keep pointing out that Bonnici’s answer in Parliament, for March 2015, was at best dodgy.
If this case keeps going through, right down to Azzopardi being found guilty by Bonnici’s mates, it is Bonnici’s reputation that will suffer most (after the Speaker’s). No one will be able to take him seriously about free speech again.
But the case would not have reached this stage if the Speaker did not make a series of decisions that would not find the approval of any other speaker of a liberal democracy with a Westminster system.
It is true that parliamentary privilege (very roughly, being able to say, during Parliamentary proceedings, anything you like without fear of libel proceedings) comes with certain strictures. ‘Unparliamentary language’ must be avoided. No insults, in other words. Certainly no calling a fellow MP a ‘liar’ (hence the popularity of the euphemism ‘misleading answer’).
But this stricture only covers what takes place formally, during a parliamentary session or in committee. It does not cover what is said at the MPs’ bar or what is whispered in private conversation.
It certainly does not cover tweets. On the contrary, for years MPs in Australia and New Zealand have been warned that tweets – even tweets written while the House is in session and within Parliament – are not covered by parliamentary immunity. In other words, speakers elsewhere have actually warned their MPs that they can be sued for tweets.
In other cases, the rulings have been that speakers do not have control over tweets, in the same way that they cannot have jurisdiction over what an MP says about another on the radio. The issues have been discussed extensively enough for Joanne McNair, a research clerk at the legislative assembly of Ontario, to have systemised the issues in an article for the Canadian Parliamentary Review two years ago. None of it offers any succour for our Speaker’s reasoning. Quite the reverse.
Instead we are left with a decision that extends the Speaker’s purview beyond Parliament, into the social media. He has interpreted a principle designed to protect MPs from undue pressure in the conduct of their work to include protection from criticism they don’t like, even though they can sue the critics for libel or defamation.
Worse, he has interpreted a principle designed to protect MPs from being sued as a principle that can allow government MPs to prosecute critics – in a forum where government MPs can get to be judge and jury.
Nor is there anything in the principle that protects journalists or the public from such action.
But almost as strange as the ruling itself has been the behaviour of the Opposition MPs and journalists.
During Monday’s debate, the Opposition touched on the important points but not once pointed out the precedents concerning parliamentary privilege, the social media and Twitter.
The press, meanwhile, has treated the affair as simply a partisan one. Always quick to see (rightly) how censorship of even marginal artistic works could have wider consequences for society, the press is missing here how this is a ruling that the powerful could use to muzzle criticism more generally.
It’s a ruling that sets Malta down a path leading in a reverse direction from the free world. We should have enough self-respect to be disturbed by that.
ranierfsadni@europe.com