The trouble with last month’s result is not that Labour won or that the Nationalists were routed. That bit is called democracy and widely thought to be the best alternative to tyranny. Rather, the problem is that there is a risk of a familiar pattern repeating itself.
Up to June 3, most everyday conversations were fairly grave and included the words Egrant and Panama. Barely eight weeks on, Egrant sounds like something to do with online funding, and Panama is a hat with a funny story. Konrad Mizzi & Co. are happier and more powerful than they’ve ever been, and the main protagonists of Egrant are free to research the fluid dynamics of open-water swimming.
A familiar pattern, because elections in Malta have served to do things other than elect governments. They have also tended to double as general reprieves or unofficial amnesties.
As far as politics is concerned, my teens were dominated by stories of thugs who terrorised people in their home villages (Żejtun, mostly) and the rest of Malta generally. On November 30, 1986, they joined forces with the police to smash a PN meeting at Tal-Barrani. Five days later, two or three of them shot and killed Raymond Caruana in Gudja.
That those thugs had the protection of Labour politicians is clear. Which is why, when the PN was elected in 1987, the talk was of how the law was finally about to catch up with them, and with those who had abetted and protected them.
Except it did nothing of the sort. As it happened, the thugs were protected by something much bigger and more insidious than a handful of Labour politicians. That something was a system by which all was forgotten the minute the votes were counted.
The protagonists of Tal-Barrani went on to lead comfortable lives well away from prison. One turned to reggae and rastacaps, another to respectability as a breeder of livestock (on land he had been given as a reward for his mischief), and so on. Astonishingly, one was even adopted by the PN as a kind of pentito hero.
While the result of the election has made Egrant and Panama effectively redundant so far as everyday conversations are concerned, no such thing seems to be happening in court
Things were even brighter for the police officers and politicians who had protected them. Not only were they not brought to justice, but they actually enjoyed promotions, plum posts, and in many cases, success at the polls and national honours. If it were possible to reword coroners’ reports, Raymond Caruana’s would read ‘natural causes’.
Nor was 1987 and its aftermath a one-off. Breaking up political meetings and firing rounds at clubs are distant memories. The same cannot be said, however, of things like corruption. We have seen several prime examples through the years, and not once has a politician or associate been brought to book.
Rather like the shameless amnesties on VAT fines, every election forgives, forgets and wipes the slate clean. It’s a system nourished and cultivated by both parties in equal measure, perhaps because it benefits both equally.
Which is why what’s happening in court is important. There are two separate cases. In the first, magistrate Aaron Bugeja seems determined to get to the bottom of the Egrant matter, by means extensive and expensive if necessary. The months of waiting and the millions of euros in court expertise are not a waste of time and money. Whichever way the inquiry goes, they will be one of the best investments in governance we’ll have seen in years.
In the second case, magistrate Ian Farrugia has ruled that there are grounds for investigating whether Konrad Mizzi & Co. broke money-laundering laws when they opened secret accounts in Panama. Depending on the outcome of the investigation, we may yet see criminal proceedings with potentially serious consequences.
The point is that, while the result of the election has made Egrant and Panama effectively redundant so far as everyday conversations are concerned, no such thing seems to be happening in court. There, it is as if June 3 never happened. Or rather, fingers crossed it is, but there is no reason to think otherwise of magistrates Bugeja and Farrugia.
I trust that this comes as good news to both Labourites and Nationalists. By the former I mean those in the Labour Party who believe that Konrad Mizzi & Co.’s were peccadilloes of the così fan tutti kind, and that Egrant was a dastardly fabrication. They will be relieved to be told by the inquiring magistrates that the people they returned to power are incorruptible stalwarts of the highest integrity.
As for Nationalists, the temptation is to do a 1987 and let it all flow under the bridge. Whoever the new leader is, he will want to put as much distance between him and his predecessor, a man who has a nasty habit of going on about Egrant and Panama when all is lost. In any case it is a universally acknowledged fact that the party is in a weakened state and in no position to take up lost causes.
Except if it did that, the PN would be weakened even further. It would be letting go of the biggest story in politics and one of the most important before the courts. What the magistrates are doing is a turn of events that, thankfully for us, threatens to break the system that let the 1980s thugs and a string of corrupt politicians walk free.
If there is hope, it lies neither in the politicians nor in the proles, but rather in the courts. Rather a predicament for a democracy to be in, really, but history will not have it otherwise.
mafalzon@hotmail.com