As I finish off this piece on Friday morning, a full week after the 17 Black story broke, the police have not yet taken in Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri for questioning. On Thursday we witnessed the sorry sight of Occupy Justice activists having to file a formal police report with the published facts, to force the police out of their politically induced lethargy.
Not that the police needed a formal report to put aside their pastizzi. By law they are empowered to investigate any information that comes to light that they feel could point to an illegality. The point has been well made by others that in this case the police are not faced with some obscure insinuation, or even the words of a potential whistleblower that may or may not be true.
They have solid, hard, documented facts that point, like the skeletal finger of Christmas Future, to the intent at money laundering. In and of itself, this is a criminal offence. And yet their paralysis, which first came to light 30 months ago when the FIAU director resigned reportedly because the police ignored his recommendation to start a criminal investigation on Brian Tonna and Keith Schembri, continues.
Trying to secure truth and justice in Maltese public life is starting to feel like that recurring nightmare when the air through which you walk becomes more and more viscous, and you struggle harder and harder to reach your target that is mockingly out of reach. Government’s response to increasing calls for the shouldering of political responsibility is a mesmerising mix of magic card tricks and Orwellian doublespeak.
Its inaction, we are told, is really the ultimate form of action. Its cynical manipulation of every cavil in the letter of the law to postpone as much as possible even the start of a proper judicial inquiry on the Panama accounts, which are now inextricably bound to the 17 Black payments, is nothing but the supreme form of respect for the rule of law. The frenetic blur of its three-card trick to obscure the 17 Black-Panama connection is clearly the ultimate in prime-ministerial integrity.
Government’s response to increasing calls for the shouldering of political responsibility is a mesmerising mix of magic card tricks and Orwellian doublespeak
The truth is here; no, there; no, behind your ear. And in front of this shameless charade, this sickening travesty of justice, the many thousands who have compromised their soul over these last five years to be allowed a share in the swill biex idaħħlu lira żejda, to make an extra buck, shrug in silence and get on with their lives.
Their silence should shame them. And if they are beyond shame, it damns them.
Porsche vs FIAT
In 2015 on his first visit to the United States, Pope Francis stunned Americans by riding off the airport tarmac in a FIAT 500. It was seen as a visible sign of the Pope’s frugality and simplicity. In divesting himself of the hulking black limousine, the ultimate statement of political power and privilege in America, the Pope was sending a clear signal that his heart beat with and for the poor. His symbolic renunciation give him added freedom and authenticity to preach the Golden Rule in the US Congress, for which he received a bipartisan standing ovation.
A few days ago, the new parish priest for Żebbuġ, Gozo saw fit to take possession of his new domain on a Porsche Boxster. Let us leave aside for the moment the disturbing display, especially during this particular period of trial for the Church, of young children pulling the car like so many slaves in a Roman triumphal procession.
What took place in Żebbuġ was not a “display of joy”, as the Gozitan Curia’s damage limitation attempt would have us believe. And it was more than simple inter-village one-upmanship. It was a transaction of power. The people were putting their new tribal chief on his pedestal, and there he would be expected to stay, performing the prescribed rites and mysteries.
He would protect them, and they would protect him.
No wonder the new Lord of Żebbuġ felt safe enough to display his crass insensitivity,and to fob off the press with an arrogant dismissal.
This was not the Church of Francis, but of Constantine.
To End all Wars
As we Maltese Lilliputians play 17 Blackjack, the world is commemorating 100 years since the end of the mindless massacre and folly of the First World War.
Since the War to End All Wars, 225 wars and conflicts around the world have caused 190 million deaths, although the final tally including fatalities due to conflict-induced displacement, epidemics and famines is much higher. There have only been short periods of time that the world was free of war.
In my 80th year, the world will commemorate a century since the end of the Second World War. By that year the tally of conflicts and victims would have continued to rise inexorably, a never-ending inflation that any stock market would be proud of. And as war and commerce continue feeding on each other, we civilians wear our poppies and mourn our dead, and call them heroes.
If you can’t see the point of this final piece, that’s the point. A hundred years ago they lay dead in their millions like autumn leaves. Winter came and blew the leaves away, and a new autumn came, and another. Sometimes it’s difficult to remember spring.
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece