With the latest news about Konrad Mizzi’s Panama company – how, according to an e-mail sent by Mizzi’s financial advisor to FPB Bank of Panama, the company was to receive €240,000 a year from ‘management consultancy and brokerage’ – Panamagate enters a new phase.
The politicians under fire are dropping all pretence of being public servants. They are beginning to speak and behave for all the world as though they are our masters.
In the first phase, before the publication of the Panama Papers, when the allegations were being made by Daphne Caruana Galizia alone, Mizzi sought to be accessible to the press, taking their questions and sounding as earnest as possible.
Later, of course, we found out that his answers were, at best, evasive and misleading. But, at least, he kept up the pretence of being a public servant who owed us, the public, answers that addressed the actual questions.
It was in marked contrast to Keith Schembri, who has never acknowledged that the questions raised by his offshore activities need to be answered. He persists in saying it’s his private business.
In a second phase, the Panama Papers were published, Caruana Galizia’s essential allegations were shown to be true and Panamagate become international, with Mizzi’s profile splashed alongside a roll-call of the world’s corrupt public figures.
The government lost control of the headlines. The Prime Minister and Mizzi were relentlessly pressed for answers, which now began to shift shape each time new information seeped out. The anger against Mizzi was felt within the Labour parliamentary group itself, with some doubt cast about whether all Labour MPs would vote for Mizzi when a motion of no confidence in him loomed.
In response to the loss of the media agenda, the government doubled down. Labour MPs were corralled into voting for Mizzi with a promise that timely ‘action’ would be taken by Joseph Muscat.
The media needed different disciplinary measures.
Glenn Bedingfield’s new blog shifted gear. It was set up, with the blessing of the Office of the Prime Minister – yes, the OPM. There is no other credible way of seeing matters once the blog is run by one of Muscat’s prominent communications aides and with Muscat seeing no conflict of interest between Bedingfield’s controversial opinions and the OPM’s agenda. Among the blog’s targets is a media ‘conspiracy’ with the Nationalist Party.
In addition, libel suits against the press began to fly, although curiously not against Caruana Galizia, despite the fact that only she uses the words ‘corrupt’ and ‘liars’ when speaking of Muscat, Mizzi, Schembri, and their financial advisors.
And veiled threats against the press began to be issued. A government-friendly newspaper editorial spoke of what might happen, after the next election, to media organisations that were an obstacle to ‘progress’. Schembri spoke publicly of how Progress Press (this newspaper’s publisher) owed him a lot of money…
European case law is particularly insistent on protecting free speech not just in principle but in practice
Now, we have entered the third phase. Mizzi has dropped all pretence of engaging with the media’s questions.
He stopped trying to explain matters some time ago but at least he tried to seem to be doing so. Now, he doesn’t bother.
This newspaper has seen e-mail evidence that Nexia BT, Mizzi’s financial advisors, wrote to a Panama bank saying Mizzi’s company planned to receive almost a quarter of a million euros a year from ‘management consultancy and brokerage’. On its own, this e-mail gives the lie to everything Mizzi has told us with respect to his plans for the company.
However, when this newspaper sought Mizzi’s reaction to the e-mail, he referred them to a statement he had issued in April.
In other words, a public statement issued before the Panama Papers were even published and the damning e-mails surfaced. It is a statement from the time when we didn’t yet know that his advisors had made (at least) nine efforts to open a bank account for Mizzi’s company.
More importantly, the statement dates from a time when Mizzi could deny that he wanted his company to provide management consultancy and brokerage while he was minister.
In other words, that April statement doesn’t begin to address what the Panama Papers show. He cannot refer us to a statement issued almost two months ago when, this week, we learn of his plans to deposit a quarter of a million euros every year, even while he was minister, from services that he is forbidden to offer as minister.
Those plans need explanation. A plain denial won’t do. We need to know why his financial advisor, Karl Cini, felt he could write like that on Mizzi’s behalf. It is no longer something that can be dismissed as a matter of a formulaic box being wrongly ticked.
Yet, Mizzi has simply ignored (as of the time of writing) the real question. Evidently, he doesn’t feel he owes us an explanation. He is no longer going through the motions of acting like a public servant. He acts like a master who barely apologises and never explains.
This attitude is of a piece with two other developments we have seen as Panamagate unfolded.
The first concerns data protection. Both Mizzi and Schembri have used their respective lawyers to demand that journalists hand over all the Panamagate-related evidence they have, saying it was only reasonable and fair. Schembri’s lawyers even had the nerve to cite European laws that give ordinary citizens access to data held on them.
The second concerns the Prime Minister’s defence of Bedingfield’s blog under freedom of speech.
Make no mistake: in any liberal democracy, the invocation of those laws for these purposes would be considered either laughable or sinister.
Both sets of laws are meant to keep the powerful in check. However, the interpretations being put forward by the government would, if followed, grant more power to the powerful and reduce everyone else’s.
The laws on access to personal data are there to protect ordinary citizens from having information about their legitimate lives compiled abusively against them by powerful organisations, including the government. The key word is legitimate. It obviously doesn’t cover investigations into possible criminal activity – otherwise criminals could routinely demand what information the police, at any moment, had on them.
Journalists’ investigations are there to keep the powerful accountable. If a government minister were able to demand that journalists hand over any information they have on him, investigative journalism in this country would die. It would no longer be possible to investigate political abuse.
As for freedom of speech, that too is meant to protect critics of powerful interests. It is particularly meant to protect opponents of the government of the day against intimidation.
European case law is particularly insistent on protecting free speech not just in principle but in practice. People don’t just have the right to speak up; they shouldn’t have to feel afraid to do so. The powerful – whether it’s the State, the government, the democratic majority, or certain other institutions – have every right to reply to critics but not in a way that could intimidate further criticism.
Bedingfield’s blog – sharp-tongued, sarcastic, satirical, gossipy, giving government critics as good as it gets, playing on and over the boundaries of good taste – would have every right to protection under freedom of expression but only if he were not part of the government’s apparatus. Once he is, everything he says could serve to undermine the freedom of expression of others by intimidating them.
In real democracies, sharp satire and sarcasm are the weapons of the relatively weak – never of governments. But then, of course, in real democracies no minister would demand the information the press has on him, nor would he survive for long if he evaded legitimate questions from the press.
ranierfsadni@europe.com