Three men will spend the year awaiting trial for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The investigations that led to their indictment have not reached their logical end. There can be no closure until we find out who contracted them. We cannot relent from making this point until all the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth prevails.
Four magisterial inquiries are expected to be reaching their conclusion in 2018 and four decisions will be made on whether police investigations and actions should commence on powerful people whose secrets were revealed by the Panama Papers leaks.
Only the magistrates themselves could know with any certainty where their inquiries are likely to lead them. But the time that has passed since they got busy suggests they have a lot to read and, possibly, delve in even further. Whether they decide there are prima facie cases to investigate or that there aren’t any, the burden of their decision is heavy and the consequences massive either way. One of those magisterial inquiries is assessing corruption at the highest level of the government in Malta.
In the New Year the Nationalist Party seals its own fate for the foreseeable future. The new leadership has a narrow window ahead of it to turn the tide. Adrian Delia’s and the party’s ratings need to improve not only for the sake of the party itself but for the sake of democracy in Malta. The turnaround must now be rapid and exponential.
The experience of 2017 shows that it is not enough for the PN to be right.
It has to make its case to avoid being sucked in by the political collapse that Labour’s betrayal of the people’s trust will inevitably bring about. The tendency in the New Year will be for more people to feel alienated from the political class in general, little realising that that is what suits Labour in general and Joseph Muscat personally best.
Politics is about making a choice since absconding from that duty is a vote for the present status quo that is built on corruption and bad governance even if camouflaged through a very well-oiled propaganda machine and by economic goodies.
The tendency in the New Year will be for more people to feel alienated from the political class in general
The PN’s work throughout this year will be measured soon after the end of 2018. The local and European elections due the following year will come at the end of a steep, rough and exhausting climb.
True, the 2019 ballot is a half-way milestone to the final target of a general election some two years later. But the European Parliament election will be an inescapable measure of progress in the effort to turnaround the PN’s fortunes.
The people can opt to send a message to the government that it can behave daily in a more omnipotent manner or that it could do with a clipping of its mighty wings.
Helping the PN achieve the right result in 2019 will be my own focus during 2018. The tentacles of the power of the executive ensure that truth is suppressed even by institutions that should be protecting the people.
But those tentacles have not reached the European Parliament that has stepped up its role as a guardian of the fundamental rights of the people of Malta. This year, I shall be reporting on behalf of the European People’s Party about the concept of media pluralism and freedom of expression.
Media is part of the remit of the European Parliament’s Culture and Education Committee of which I am a member.
Members of that Committee will visit Malta on the occasion that Valletta was selected as the European Capital for Culture for 2018.
Various events will unfold throughout the year after an official commencement on January 20.
As former minister of culture, it was satisfying to kick off this process through the bid book titled Imagine 18 – the culmination of what makes us Maltese.
More important than all the colourful events put together, will be projects that offer a legacy lasting well beyond this year. I particularly look forward to the opening of Muża, our new museum of art housed at Auberge d’Italie. This will be our major flagship project for Valletta’s European Capital City of Culture.
Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MEP.