The US arrest of the Iranian head of Pilatus Bank sent shock ripples through Malta. We have not forgotten the memorable evening, soon before the general elections last June, when this same Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad walked around the back of Whitehall Mansions in Ta’ Xbiex carrying a mysterious bag, followed and questioned by journalists, while our police commissioner enjoyed a fenkata.
Hasheminejad was arrested in the US in connection with a probe which has not been linked to Malta or Pilatus Bank, but the Financial Times carried a headline referring to him as “Malta bank chief”, noting the bank was “a frequent target” of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. Building up a good reputation is hard, but losing it is so much easier.
I hope the defenders of dubious governance are now not going to accuse Maltese journalists or MEPs of influencing and manipulating the American justice system, or the Financial Times for that matter.
Pilatus Bank had taken steps to initiate libel cases against Daphne, viewed as SLAPP lawsuits intended to shut her up, and also pressured other sections of the Maltese press. Ironically, Sadr recently said in a public forum that the financial services sector “has been facing a chronic disease when it comes to the level of trust”. Well, that’s hardly surprising in such circumstances.
Different reactions
Until Daphne’s investigations are followed up and answers provided, suspicions will grow and persist. As in a ghost story, the unknown creates fear and dread; once the spectre is identified the nightmare may begin to subside.
It is still early to fully understand what has been unleashed with Daphne’s assassination. What does the violent silencing of a journalist achieve? The Economist describes a series of political assassinations over the years, which had unintended wide-reaching consequences and triggered events not envisaged by the perpetrators.
In Slovakia, the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak has led to the resignation of no less than the Prime Minister Robert Fico and senior Cabinet ministers. Thousands protested in the streets calling for an independent investigation, and President Andrej Kiska has also pushed for a change in the leadership of the Slovak police force.
Instead of attempting to normalise a negative trend, our leaders should point out the road towards improvement
In Malta the response to Daphne’s murder has been very different, with no resignations or shouldering of political responsibility. Instead, we are obliged to watch the farcical show of political appointees like Jason Micallef, determined to remove the flowers placed opposite the law courts in Valletta in her memory. But attempting to destroy this spontaneous memorial will not make people forget. It will push them to remember, and harden their resolve. The atmosphere in Malta has changed.
No matter what individual people felt about Daphne when alive, they should rise above their petty personal animosity or partisan choices, and recognise that the assassination of a journalist is a major and dangerous event. A journalist has been brutally murdered. The country must show without doubt that responsibility for anything that led to it will be shouldered, and that the action will be punished with the full force of the law.
Looking corruption in the eye
“Corruption is a way of thinking and of what is considered acceptable,” the European Commission’s economic affairs director reportedly said this week at the presentation of the 2018 Malta Country Report. While the potential for economic growth in Malta was considered to be favourable, the EC emphasised this could be negatively impacted by the issue of corruption.
As Matthew wrote in the gospels 2,000 years ago, a healthy tree will continue to bear good fruit but a diseased tree will not. The EC is advocating “a systematic response to this systematic issue”, noting that apart from corruption in politics, corruption in the private sector is an even bigger problem. The response of Maltese businessmen to an EU-wide survey published three months ago supports this analysis.
In this survey in December 2017 an overwhelming 84 per cent of Maltese businesses said corruption is a widespread problem in this country. Fifty-seven per cent mentioned the funding of political parties in exchange for public contracts or influence over policy-making as a problem they faced.
The survey also showed an increasing trend of respondents stating that they did not participate in public tenders because the deal seemed to be done before the call to tender. Two thirds of companies in Malta (70 per cent) said the abuse of negotiated procedures was widespread. There was also a decline of respondents who said that corruption was tackled with impartiality.
Is the government intending to address this deep-rooted problem, and what is it planning to do about it? At the Country Report presentation, the reported Maltese official response sounded rather lame and defensive, noting that a certain level of corruption is normal everywhere and has always existed.
Instead of attempting to normalise a negative trend, our leaders should point out the road towards improvement. The first step towards solving a problem is not to turn a blind eye, but to recognise it.
petracdingli@gmail.com