You may have heard this famous phrase before: ‘a week is a long time in politics.’
First coined by former British prime minister Harold Wilson in the context of a currency crisis in 1964, its enduring wisdom makes it quotable and relevant to this very day.
The meaning is implicit. Given the speed with which political crises can develop, a week can make the difference between securing an electoral landslide or losing your grip on power entirely.
Of course, wisdom that applied to British politics more than 60 years ago needs some transposition to fit in today’s context.
If a week was a long time back then, a 24-hour news cycle today can keep an entire country on edge.
Politics is like a pressure-cooker that is always boiling. At most, you can lift the lid and evacuate some of the heat every now and then. But, with today’s lightning fast information economy, there’s no switching off.
With two years to go at most for Malta’s next general elections, both major parties are already gearing up. The next two years will feel exactly like that: a pressure-cooker full of vitriol and tension.
If Wilson thought a week was a long time 60 years ago, then one can only imagine what prime minister Robert Abela must be thinking about these next two years.
In a normal country, I’d have the right to ask the prime minister directly, in an open pit format with other journalists firing questions at will. Instead, I must resort to piecing it together.
For those of you with the attention span of a gerbil, here’s the long and short of it: the Labour government is far too compromised to be able to distance itself from the wholesale corruption that disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat was directly responsible for.
The orchestrated frenzy of attacks against government critics and the handful of members of the judiciary who dared to make the right call by recommending criminal charges against Muscat and his associates shows that there is nothing but fear and loathing within the walls of Castille.
The first major clue is the increasingly manic, conspiratorial tone adopted by the government, including by the prime minister himself in a 45-minute rant in Parliament last week.
The second clue is in what he said. If you thought the prime minister sounded like Karl Stagno Navarra, well – that’s because the prime minister’s allegations and Stagno Navarra’s allegations are one and the same.
A screenshot of Karl Stagno Navarra’s post in which he is effectively piggy-backing off the prime minister’s statement in Parliament.
Digest that for a second.
The claims made by the prime minister of a European member state and a fraudulent freeloader are one and the same.
While the Labour Party’s president, Alex Sciberras, claimed that Stagno Navarra is acting “on his own initiative“, the prime minister’s decision to directly reference the same talking points blows Sciberras’ claim out of the water entirely – especially when considering Sciberras was all too happy to engage in fascist attacks of his own.
The third and most important clue is connecting the dots between the manic rhetoric, the history of the individuals pushing that narrative, and the legislation which the Labour government is desperately trying to change. This is what ties it all together.
Let’s start with the first link on this chain – the prime minister.
The prime minister is no stranger to making insane declarations, as was evidenced by the Labour Party’s disastrous campaign during the local council / MEP elections, in which he kept insisting that there is an “establishment” of individuals orchestrating charges against Joseph Muscat and his associates (all of whom, conveniently, are his most respected critics and/or individuals marked as dissidents).
While Abela did pay lip-service to the notion that the electorate clearly wished to remind them who’s really in charge, the fact is that all the promises of heeding the call were just more lies to cover up one, unassailable fact: the party is corrupt and has no legitimate way of dealing with that.
That brings us back around to that second clue we mentioned earlier: the evident impunity afforded to individuals like Karl Stagno Navarra and Neville Gafa’, Joseph Muscat’s favourite mouthpiece.
The prime minister’s decision to lift talking points directly from the likes of these two is not just an act of desperation. It’s evidence of what I just said two paragraphs ago: that there is no legitimate way out. And so, the hatchet men come out to play.
Now, the rhetoric has become even more deranged.
Though I am yet to hear the prime minister referencing “the establishment” since that mortifying electoral performance, Stagno Navarra and Neville Gafa’ continue referencing it.
Though the prime minister seems to have temporarily backed off from directly naming and shaming journalists after The Shift’s editor sued him for defamation, the hatchet men are none too bothered and continue doing their master’s bidding.
And, last but not least, the latest attempt at turning the tables onto the Nationalist Party by filing two requests for magisterial inquiries and publicly accusing the Opposition of illegal financing, criminal conspiracy, financial evasion, and money laundering.
Yet again, the prime minister knows he would sound completely ridiculous if he had to file those requests himself after using his entire government to force through changes to the way requests for magisterial inquiries are made. Hatchet men can truly fix anything.
And this is where it all ties together: this messy assault on anyone who doesn’t wake up screaming “VIVA L-LABOUR” at the top of their lungs every morning is largely driven by fear, the same fear that is evident from the maniacal tone and the active deployment of their worst stooges.
The outcome of these inquiries have forced the government into difficult circumstances which are not entirely within their control.
The ones that have already led to two criminal cases – the hospitals concession case and 17 Black – are already causing an incalculable amount of damage to the party’s operations.
Other magisterial inquiries remain ongoing. What else could be confirmed by these inquiries? Who else is expecting criminal charges to head their way? The Labour Party doesn’t want anyone to know anything about any of that. ‘Shut the whole thing down’ remains their only option.
Though this is an entirely unprecedented strain of fascism in Malta’s independent history, the fact is that it is occurring at the tail end of a twelve year streak of corruption.
Like all other systems that squeeze out morality to generate more profit, the biggest liability of this criminal government is itself.
If Abela thinks he can keep this up for the next two years, he’s got another thing coming.