Fate really does have a cruel sense of humour sometimes.
It’s been two weeks since prime minister Robert Abela and justice minister Jonathan Attard used their parliamentary privileges to intimidate a former chief justice.
In that same plenary session, the government doubled down on its full-scale assault on the justice system. We are now three months into a protracted campaign to kill a private citizen’s right to request a magisterial inquiry.
Like all other overconfident aggressors, the government has a habit of overplaying its hand and failing to recognise that, inevitably, the other shoe must drop at some point. You cannot gnaw away at the foundation of a country’s democratic system and then act surprised when your foot goes through the damn floor.
By now, I’m sure everyone’s heard of the scandalous heist that took place beneath the AFM’s nose. There is a common thread between the events that unfolded over last weekend and the campaign we’ve seen in the past few months. Let’s pick on it.
Just this morning, I read a Times of Malta report which quotes the prime minister’s comments.
Abela expressed “total” confidence in the country’s law enforcement and stated that there are three ongoing investigations about the theft – a police investigation, a magisterial inquiry, and an internal government investigation led by a retired magistrate.
Hold on a minute.
Did anyone force the prime minister to give the police six months to look into it before roping in a judge with powers of inquiry?
No. A magisterial inquiry was launched immediately, alongside a parallel police investigation. As it should be.
Was the inquiring magistrate made to consider whether this may be a vexatious request that may undermine the rights of any potential suspects?
No, because 200kg of cannabis resin was stolen from a “secure” site, and everyone knows that if there’s one thing that drugs are known for, it’s the fact that they move incredibly quickly.
If and when the investigation leads to arrests, is anyone going to stand in the magistrate’s way when it comes to issuing recommendations for criminal charges? No, because the government got caught with its pants down on this one and they desperately need to look less incompetent.
No wonder the prime minister went to such lengths to praise the track record of both the home affairs minister and the AFM.
They’re indispensable in the fight against illegal migration, he tells us – much like that human rights abuser that they’re so fond of, Lt Col Alex Dalli.
We suspended the AFM’s commander, Abela insists – even though he says that nothing seems to indicate the commander’s involvement in the matter. In other words: we made someone else fall on the sword, because we certainly had nothing to do with it.
Watching Abela trying to persuade reporters that the government is handling this mess by launching three separate investigations is jarring beyond belief.
After spending the past two months documenting their fascist attempts at killing the right to request a magisterial inquiry, the fact that the government itself is handling this crisis by immediately launching inquiries speaks volumes about the bitter, surreal irony of it all.
On the one hand, the government resists all attempts at kickstarting magisterial inquiries that look into crimes committed by its own representatives.
On the other, it attempts to prove its adequacy by resolving this particular crime using the same exact tools that they want to deny to private citizens.
A textbook moment of tyranny: making justice available only when you need it yourself and then restricting access to it when others have reason to believe that justice must be used against you.
The shamefulness of it all is best captured by the chaotic scenes that unfold in Parliament anytime the Opposition decides to remember that it lives and breathes.
As Times of Malta aptly put it, Parliament ‘descended into chaos‘ again yesterday. The incompetent fool at the heart of it all, home affairs minister Byron Camilleri, didn’t even bother to show up.
Meanwhile, the Nationalist Party went all in with the pearl-clutching about 200kg of cannabis resin being out in our streets again.
After the plenary session was suspended multiple times, Opposition leader Bernard Grech emerged from Parliament and reiterated a list of the home affairs’ minister’s failures, accusing the prime minister of being oblivious to the suffering of families who lost loved ones to drug addiction.
By way of a minor side note (all things considered), it is incredible how the Nationalist Party has the ability to come off sounding like it’s unable to grasp topics outside of the conservative bubble even in a situation when the main news item is far more important.
Though the Opposition did hammer home the point that the government is corrupt and that Byron Camilleri must resign, its soundbites carried echoes of fearmongering. It wasn’t just about corruption – it was also about “oh no, drugs! On our streets! In lovely idyllic Malta!”
Even when presented with a golden opportunity to swiftly bash the government’s teeth in, the Nationalist Party’s message sounds as believable as an undercover cop trying to convince you he’s not a narc.
Thanks to our hopelessly corrupt government and inept members of Parliament, Malta’s so-called House of Representatives amounts to nothing more than a rubber-stamping forum that dabbles in a bit of absurdist theatre on the side. As long as the current winner-takes-all system stands – a system which both parties have obstinately refused to fix – neither major party has any credibility.
As long as we keep pretending that a minister “offering” his resignation and saying sorry is enough, we will simply have to continue dealing with our country becoming more of a corrupt hellhole with each and every passing day.
I don’t want to hear Byron Camilleri’s pathetic excuses. I want to hear that bastard apologising to every single vulnerable person who’s been harmed as a result of his gross failures to give the country the kind of law enforcement it desperately needs, right before resigning and ridding us all of that dead-eyed grin of his.