Let me make it clear from the very outset: this is not a criticism of the government’s lawyers. They take instructions from their principals, so fingers point not at them, but at their client, the government of Malta. And there are far too many fingers pointing.

An international tribunal, like the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, constantly attracts international spotlight. That is not the tribunal for parking outside the lines, sitting in Ħal Muxi. Every move in Strasbourg attracts worldwide scru­tiny. How Malta defends itself there is not a private irrelevance. Government lawyers represent government po­li­cies, stan­dards, ethics, pro­fes­siona­lity. Sadly, their absence too.

This time round, I will look at the totally unprincipled tactics the government adopts in some of its international human-rights litigation. And by unprincipled, I mean upholding in Strasbourg what it had condemned in Malta, or vice versa. Why does the government believe that something, and its very opposite, can both be right? Can you plead white in Malta and black in Strasbourg? Not to offend, I will limit myself to some older cases; unknown stories which have to be heard to be believed.

Charles Demicoli was charged by the Labour Parliament under Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici with having breached the privileges of Labour MPs. He was facing a prison sentence. In Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition, Eddie Fenech Adami, forcefully and competently ex­pounded legal arguments why Parliament should not try Demicoli, and if it did, why MPs should acquit him. The government MPs, just as forcefully, if rather less competently, asserted the right to imprison Demicoli.

Demicoli took his human rights complaint against Malta to the Strasbourg Court, virtually adopting in his defence the legal arguments that Dr Fenech Adami had used in Parliament. Meanwhile, there had been a change of government. Fenech Adami was now Prime Minister.

One would have believed that the new government ministers, who had, when in opposition, pleaded the illegality of Demicoli’s trial by Parliament, would now uphold what they had upheld in Parliament – that Demicoli had been the victim of political vendetta through a system and a law that violated human rights. Pious hopes.

In Strasbourg, the lawyer of the Fenech Adami government rubbished all the legal arguments Fenech Adami had pleaded in Parliament in Demicoli’s favour. In Strasbourg, the Fenech Adami government lawyer honed all his fore­nsic skills to undermine Fenech Adami’s arguments, and to prove how right the socialist MPs had been all along in harrying Demicoli.

The Nationalist government’s lawyer disowned flatly all that the Nationalist Prime Minister, when Leader of the Opposition, had pleaded in Parliament. The lawyer of the Nationalist government espoused all the arguments of the former Labour government to prove the Nationalist leader mistaken and to justify the persecution of Demicoli.

Thoroughly offensive, unprincipled and surreal. In an international court, Demicoli had to swallow the bitter chalice to the very dregs, that of hearing the Nationalist government spokes­man argue how perfectly legal it had been for the former government to hound him, and how his arguments – which echoed faithfully those of the Nationalist leader – were laughable fallacies. Demicoli’s only consolation was that the ECHR ruled unanimously in favour of Fenech Adami One and against Fenech Adami Two, much to the chagrin of the lawyers of the Fenech Adami government.

These are hallmarks of shifting morality, the imposture of those who substitute ethics with convenience

This was Malta’s debut case in the Strasbourg Court, and this curtain-raiser had all the promise of a well-crafted time bomb. The kindest thing you could notice about it was its tragically, shockingly, unprincipled debut. The sequels did not let you down. There was an admirable consistency on the government side – the ones that followed were just as unprincipled.

Take the adoption case. An unmarried woman in a relationship had got pregnant by her unmarried boyfriend. Towards the end of the pregnancy their relationship had turned cold. He came to know that immediately at the birth of his child, she had given their baby up for adoption, without his knowledge and against his consent. He sued the State and his former girlfriend to block the adoption.

In Malta, the government law­yers supported the father’s legal claims: it would breach his human rights if the court were to authorise the adoption of his son without hearing him. In his written pleadings, the Attorney-General formally requested the court to interpret the law in a way that would prevent the adoption without hearing the father, as only this would avoid a violation of the Constitution and the Convention.

In their written submissions in the appeal stage, the Attorney-General again fully supported the father, formally reasserting the government’s opposition to an interpretation of the law that would disregard the father’s views on the proposed adoption – the alternative would be a clear violation of a father’s fundamental rights.

The Maltese courts held otherwise, and against the father’s consent and the Attorney-General’s objections, ordered the adoption to go through.

The father took his case to the Strasbourg Court; only to witness there, in total disbelief, the government perform a faultless triple somersault in reverse. What the government had loudly proposed in the local courts, it just as loudly opposed in the European court, without a hint of embarrassment.

The government lawyers thought it would be absolutely admirable to praise as right what they had, a few months before, damned as wrong: bully for the Maltese courts for having discarded the Attorney-General’s submissions, implied the Attorney-General with bored panache. Some call it pleading, others volte face. I would avoid harsh words. I would settle for amoral opportunism.

The couple eventually got married, but their flesh and blood by now belonged to strangers, compliments of the courts.

These antics, unbecoming the most desperate litigant, become repugnant when they tarnish what we yearn to see as the majesty of the State. These are hallmarks of shifting morality, the imposture of those who substitute ethics with convenience. In Malta it is permissible to plead everything, and the opposite of everything, so long as you keep a straight face. Confidence tricksters do it, so why not the Maltese governments?

Another similar case, to wrap them all up. In a wave of arbitrary detentions and searches carried out by the police, TV, a frail and disabled person who could not harm an embalmed fly, was arrested and tortured, his home invaded and searched. The Nationalist opposition rallied the people to a mammoth demonstration on the Granaries, holding out TV as a martyr to fascist oppression.

A broken man, TV took his torture complaints to the constitutional courts, which certified him a proved victim of torture, but added that the search of his home, although illegal, did not violate his human rights. TV then applied to the Strasbourg court to find that the illegal search of his home had breached his human rights.

Meanwhile, the people had voted for a change of government and the Nationalists were now in power.

In Strasbourg, TV had the merciless pleasure of being roasted by the Nationalist government’s law­yers. What the Nationalists, in opposition, had branded as fascist, abusive and oppressive, had, they now found out, been laudable acts of a democratic government forced to ensure its survival against the threats posed by the likes of TV.

The police action, the Nationalist government’s legal spokesmen now argued in Strasbourg, only protected the State against the treasonable seditions in which TV must surely have conspired. If TV had been detained and his house searched, the police must have had some evidence of his wrongdoing, claimed the Nationalist government’s legal spokesmen, against TV, until recently the ikon of Nationalist martyrdom.

With stomach-churning cynicism, the Nationalist government’s lawyers resisted TV’s claim for compensation, branding it a squalid manoeuvre by a cheap profiteer bent on scrounging unearned pennies from the national coffers for what had been, at most, “a somewhat negative experience”. The certified torture of a physically disabled person was, to the new cynics, a somewhat negative experience, like missing your appointment with the chiropodist or spilling a double espresso on your new jeans.

I denounce this as unprincipled – the schizophrenia of politicians with two semblances of morality, anxious only to embrace the convenience of the moment. I would like to look at my State in the face. Yes, but which of the two?

Giovanni Bonello served as judge of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg for 12 years.

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