We need a bigger bandwagon…

If there’s one thing the experience of the past 20 years has (or should have) taught us, it is that no one in this country can rightfully claim to occupy the moral high ground.

Sadly, I don’t have room for a full list of examples – that would require enough column inches for all 24 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, with plenty left over to spare. So I’ll limit myself to just two discharges from my observational blunderbuss. 

One: after 16 years in Opposition crying foul over corruption and human rights, the Nationalist Party came into power in May 1987… to preside over a 25-year administration that would eventually become mired precisely in corruption and human rights abuse scandals.

I won’t go into the merits of ‘whose corruption scandal’ was more heinous or depraved. For one thing, there is no reliable indicator by which corruption can actually be measured. If we were to take the amount of money hived off the system as the ‘currency’ (so to speak) of corruption, there would be little doubt that the Nationalists were the more corrupt. But then again, the sort of money that has been in circulation in the past 10 to 15 years quite simply didn’t exist in the 1970s and 1980s. It’s not a like-with-like comparison.

If, on the other hand, we take the institutional somersaults that were required to justify and/or ‘hide’ corruption at the time… on this score, the Labour governments led by Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici clearly enjoy an unassailable lead at the top of the table. Back then, not even the most basic entry-level safeguards against corruption even existed. To talk of ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ in this context is merely to indulge in pointless anachronism.

But even this is not a like-with-like comparison. Malta is now an EU member state, and part of the 10-year process leading to accession in 2004 concerned aligning Malta’s laws with those of the European acquis communautaire. You can credit the PN with wanting to take us into Europe if you like; but once that decision was taken, there was no choice but to transpose European community law – with its multiple safeguards against corruption – into local legislation. 

The human rights issue is perhaps more clear-cut. Having railed for decades against abuse of power by the police, the Nationalists spent the first 20 of their 25 years in power doggedly resisting all attempts to introduce institutional safeguards against human rights violations in the Police Force. It was only in 2008 – under pressure from the Council of Europe – that certain basic rights were introduced: among them, the right of access to a lawyer while in police custody.

In both scenarios, this sort of intransigence cost human lives. The cases of Nardu Debono and Wilfred Cardona are well-enough documented as examples of Labour’s pitiful track record in this area. Under the Nationalists we saw a similar institutional lacuna applied to detention centres: and at least two asylum seekers paid for this vacuum with their lives, as confirmed by the 2014 Valencia enquiry report.

The same report revealed serial sexual abuse of vulnerable detainees; and to this we can add the situation facing Corradino prison, where systemic and administrative blights eventually led to the resignation of a former prison director in 2013. 

Whether the excesses of the two regimes ‘balance each out’ is a somewhat academic exercise at this point. A blunt and dispassionate assessment of their respective efforts can only lead to one conclusion: neither was particularly forward-looking or pro-active when it came to corruption or human rights protection; both were negligent and left a very great deal to be desired.

The second observation concerns more recent events. After years shouting from the rooftop of Mile End about (surprise, surprise), ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’, the incoming Labour government simply picked up where the Nationalists left off. It resisted publishing contracts concerning the partial privatisation of Enemalta and the construction of the new power station by Shanghai Electric... and would have continued resisting, had these contracts not been surreptitiously made public by the Opposition. And just to refresh memories: this is the same Labour Party that on a daily basis had challenged former PM Lawrence Gonzi to publish the BWSC contract. 

As for that other battle cry, ‘meritocracy’: we all got a glimpse of how this works in practice when Cabinet approved the appointment of two new magistrates last week. Despite a report by the Bonello commission urging an overhaul of the entire selection process, the government simply went ahead and chose two of its own party’s officials – one of them a former One TV journalist with a string of inflammatory political publications to his name – for the post.

The same pattern emerges in both these instances. Regardless of what the Nationalist or Labour parties say when in opposition, no sooner do they wield the reins of government than they simply merge into one and the same thing. So mechanical and predictable is this phenomenon that Sir Isaac Newton could probably derive an immutable law of physics from it: “To every scandal there is an equal and opposite scandal”. So when the PN accuses Konrad Mizzi of having employed his wife within his ministry, it is only to be expected that a former Nationalist minister (Giovanna Debono) would have employed her husband. 

And yet, and yet… listen to them both today, and you’d get the impression the two parties are hovering somewhere far, far above the stratosphere: blissfully playing on their harps from the comfort of their puffy white clouds, their halos gleaming angelically in the early summer sun. Consider the latest example, which concerns yet another pillar of the entire concept of governance in the 21st century. The environment. 

Ever since we got to know that the government intends sacrificing 100,000 square metres of ODZ land for the construction of a Jordanian-financed university… well, suddenly it’s a case of: “Roll up! Roll up for the magical mystery pro-environment tour, folks! Just hop on board, there’s plenty of room on the bandwagon for everybody…”

And on they dutifully hop, one by one, the great environmentalists of our time. Simon Busuttil now tells us that the government would have to ‘steamroll over my party’ if it wants this development to go ahead at Zonqor point. And it’s something Busuttil should know a thing or two about: his own party having steamrolled over all opposition when it came to reducing the same ODZ area by a scarcely credible 2,000,000 square metres in 2006.

That’s not to mention the collective amnesia that now grips practically all the PN parliamentary group. With the exception of those elected in 2013 (including Busuttil himself), ALL Nationalist MPs who now shriek with horror at the proposed development of Zonqor point had voted in favour of the 2006 ODZ ‘rationalisation’ scheme themselves. And this scheme sacrificed a full 20 times more virgin land to the developers’ bulldozers than the proposed American University. 

Again, the issue of ‘whose transgression against the environment is worse’ is hardly worth pursuing at this stage. We all know they’re both the same at heart; and we all also know the reason, too. Neither party, it seems, has any other short-term solution to economic stagnation than to simply open the pressure valve and allow more construction from time to time… and while they went about it in different ways, both in their day decided to monetise undevelopable land for this purpose.

And, oh, look: both had taken exactly the same (opposite) position when on the other side of the House of Representatives. Labour in opposition had protested against the 2006 ODZ reduction, and had promised to ‘prioritise the environment’ in the last election campaign. The PN in opposition now swears to protect ODZ at all costs; and Busuttil even offers to lie in front of the bulldozers and obstruct the ‘rape’ of Zonqor point with his own body. 

Exactly how either party thinks this sort of blatant hypocrisy will help further its own credibility is quite frankly beyond me. But then again, political credibility is their own problem, and I’m getting a little tired of trying to solve their problems for them. 

What concerns me more is that it is now the environmentalist lobby – i.e., the ones who have always been consistent, regardless where the threat came from – whose credibility hangs in the balance. There is, of course, a legitimate bastion in the mounting resistance to Zonqor point. But it becomes increasingly harder to spot, when the bandwagon gets so crowded with people who have no right to be there at all. 

The Nationalists certainly have no right to be on that bandwagon, just as Labour wouldn’t have if the shoe were on the other foot. In fact, their very presence there is a deterrent to anyone who really does hold the environment to heart. And looking at this from the outside, what one sees in the bandwagon as a whole… not the individual protagonists separately.

So if the genuine environmentalist lobby in this country really does want to obtain results in its struggle against the proposed development on Zonqor point… well, it has to decide who it wants to represent the cause to the public, and then kick all the impostors off that bandwagon once and for all. 

Otherwise, few indeed would actually listen to the band when it plays… and those few would only misinterpret the tune as a political anthem anyway.