How does a corrupt government avoid collapse when the names of its own disgraced representatives keep cropping up in court?
How can you avoid justice and also credibly claim that you will ensure justice is served?
Such a conundrum would certainly be difficult for an average citizen to contemplate. Beyond whatever crime shows they watch on Netflix, most people are not really acquainted with the murky world of white collar lawlessness.
After over a decade of unchecked power, the criminal organisation that runs our government has it all figured out. Or at least, so they would like to think.
Yesterday, I witnessed disgraced representatives of the Labour Party walking into a packed, miserable courtroom.
Another day, another criminal case involving individuals who swore an oath that bound them to preventing those same exact crimes.
Not just any lowly representatives, either: a former chief of staff and a former minister sat next to each other, with two disgraced accountants occupying the space between them and the heir-apparent of one of Malta’s biggest business empires.
All crammed into the same, uncomfortable bench like common crooks. Thick as thieves, the whole lot of them.
Yesterday, in that packed, decrepit hall, justice briefly reared its head from its long slumber, eight years too late.
In spite of their unfathomable riches, the regiment of expensive lawyers representing them, and the tacit backing of a pathetic prime minister who defends the corrupt, there they sat, facing yet another raft of charges of money laundering, participation in a criminal association, trading in influence, and corrupting public officials.
Eight years too late, but there they sat, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of civil society, the free press, and a handful of brave public officials who dared to do their job in an environment that is hostile to them.
I would also like to express my genuine disdain at how people who should know better are frustrated by the apparent disappearance of key court experts who were involved in these inquiries.
Who in their right minds would go anywhere near a country that turned them into the main subjects of a mafia-sponsored witch hunt? Does anyone know anyone who would willfully place themselves in such danger, in a country where investigative journalists and anti-corruption activists are hunted down and, in Daphne’s case, murdered?
To be clear, I am of the firm opinion that if any of these court experts did commit wrongdoing, they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for betraying their duty.
But in this war between the mafia and the handful who stood up to them, who are you really inclined towards believing?
A day before all that, I was in court yet again. On Tuesday, I was present in support of an appeal case that is going to make or break whistleblower activism.
Robert Aquilina, the honorary president of Repubblika and the local representative of Fondazione Falcone, was in court to fight back against magistrate Nadine Lia’s request to investigate his sources.
At great personal risk, Aquilina shed light on the operations of Pilatus Bank and the state’s subsequent attempts at covering up egregious acts of money laundering and corruption that the bank facilitated.
Almost four years passed since the Pilatus inquiry was concluded. The state’s disinterest in prosecuting the bank officials who were legally responsible for preventing these crimes was laid bare for all to see.
Yet again, civil society, the free press, and a few brave public officials were the only reason we found out about all this in the first place. The government is far more interested in sweeping the whole affair under the rug and purging all dissenters from within the civil service.
Aquilina’s appeal also aims to overturn the same magistrate’s refusal to order the police commissioner to take action to investigate and prosecute the same officials which the inquiry recommended charges against.
In other words, it was another day in which all that is meant to safeguard our democracy was instead being subverted and used to repress it.
If Aquilina’s appeal falls through, we will move quickly into a new paradigm in which sources are no longer protected by journalists and publishers who help them get the truth out.
The importance of getting the truth out will no longer win against the government’s claimed right to secrecy. The right of the Labour Party to expose whistleblowers and brand them as traitors will outweigh your right to know about fraudulent operations like Pilatus Bank.
As others have already pointed out, the magisterial inquiry which led to the 17 Black case wouldn’t even have been possible if prime minister Robert Abela gets his way.
The prime minister seems to have finally understood the scale and the extent of the criminality which his administration is directly responsible for.
The unprecedented steps he is taking to make the right to request a magisterial inquiry practically unworkable are a clear sign of what’s to come.
The Labour Party is now forced to come to terms with the cyclical nature of corruption.
What goes around, comes around, and even though they tried very hard to stultify justice at every step of the way, the resistance proved to be just enough to put them in the last place they want to be in: at the mercy of a magistrate and squarely in the crosshairs of their own government’s prosecutors.
The government thinks it can protract its own demise by further restricting the range of lawful actions one can take to challenge its authority.
At the same time, it must keep up the pretense that it is at least mildly interested in ensuring the wheels of justice continue turning. After all, as powerful as the government may be, it nonetheless requires the justice system to continue functioning to be able to carry out its own agenda.
It cannot afford, however, to have a justice system that functions too well, so it continues to suppress it while occasionally issuing a call for a few magistrates to patch a few holes.
Slow enough to delay a case like 17 Black by eight years, but not slow enough to push the general public into riot mode.
Slow enough to delay Yorgen Fenech’s trial by five years, but not slow enough to make everyone understand that there is no interest in justice.
The direct consequence of all this is the state of the rule of law as it is today – a system that is bursting at the seams with an overflow of delayed cases.
Every day that passes between a crime being committed and that same crime being uncovered and investigated is another day in which organised crime is handed an easy win.
Do not be fooled into taking the government’s relentless campaign to discredit the press and civil society lightly.
It is a wild, dangerous attempt at further concentrating power in the hands of the executive branch of the state, and anyone treating it as anything other than that is just as much of an enemy.
Those of us who are still somehow hanging in there can see that our democracy is on life support and that Robert Abela’s hands are hovering over the plug.
The Labour Party won’t stop until it is stopped.