Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri seized on the occasion of the formal opening of the judicial year to drive home a few powerful lessons on the real essence of democratic living. His was a wise and timely warning to those loitering on the edge of the democratic precipice.

For some, democracy seems to begin and end with free and fair elections every five years. But those are only the parlour of democracy, the gate through which good governance enters. Real democracy requires far more than that. It presupposes resolute systems of autonomous, functioning checks and balances, which scrutinise the elected government relentlessly.

When those brakes fail, when the controllers become the stooges, if not the accomplices, of the controlled, democracy is on life support on a stretcher.

The Constitution requires a number of these ‘controllers’ to be firmly in place: independent and impartial courts, a robust opposition, a dedicated police force, an upright Attorney General, functioning authorities like the Broadcasting, Financial Services and Planning authorities, the Public Service, the Auditor General.

One of the principal functions of these ‘independent’ authorities is to guard against the mishandling of governmental power. What has happened to the voice of these watchdogs, many of them now eunuchs?

The Chief Justice singled out the Attorney General and the police. Who can overlook their shameless dereliction of duty, the way they fail to find one right reason to take action and all the wrong reasons to do nothing? They are today dismissed as impudent lackeys of the regime, paid from the people’s money to look the other way when evidence of the theft of the people’s money is brought to their notice.

Democracy’s last line of defence would be fearless, independent and impartial courts. Those who remember the 1970s and early 80s have to make an effort to retain some hope in the courts. With a few worthy exceptions, they had become a rubberstamp, facilitators of the heinous, enablers of breaches of citizens’ rights, accomplices of a violent and thieving gang of politicians intoxicated by power and corruption.

The present administration has appointed 15 new members of the judiciary, 14 of them bridesmaids of the government party and of their courtiers. No doubt some will behave honourably. But many were selected because their pliability is hoped to be at least on a par with their ineptitude. Dark days ahead for the judicial protection of fundamental liberties and democratic decencies.

Major question marks hang over the parliamentary Opposition too. Frail, fragmented, discredited, weighted by millstones of scandal, it has rapidly plummeted from what authority a higher moral ground confers.

With unanswered questions about alleged money laundering of the proceeds of Soho white slave criminality, with lingering suspicions of electoral misdeeds, with precarious financial housekeeping skills, it takes faith to believe in the effectiveness and fighting spirit of the new PN leadership.

What a moribund democracy, when the Opposition is shaping up to be the government’s dream-come-true.

Let’s airbrush out of the democratic equation the fabled authorities meant to control the misjudgements of government but which, in most cases, only loud-speak what it expects of them to. It is ludicrous to have ‘independent’ authorities crammed with party handmaids, not there to block abuse but to justify it. That is what the many costly, self-defeating authorities see as their prime role. These ghosts of democracy have now populated most of the democratic spaces.

The Prime Minister has vacuously “noted” the Chief Justice’s remarks and said he would not ignore his words, but begged to differ in his interpretation. These are not words to inspire confidence in the outcome of the promised constitutional review.

The Independence Constitution was devised by gentlemen for gentlemen. The founders however failed to foresee that it could be manipulated by rascals and by those intent on derailing its noble intents.

If a constitutional revision is overdue, one consideration is paramount: that checks and balances are useless if not entrusted to those who have the autonomy and desire to wield the power of scrutiny. What must be borne in mind is that a Constitution for gentlemen sometimes falls in the hands of cheats and villains.

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