The Opposition which cried wolf (again)

Personally, I shudder to think what would happen if the law courts started behaving like Busuttil today (or Sant in 1994). There would literally be no point in actually trying any particular case in a court of law

Remember the old Aesop fable about the ‘boy who cried wolf’? If not, it might be worth digging up that old schoolbook which so many of us read as children. It just gets more relevant with each passing year. 

So a shepherd boy sat on a hillside tending his flock, and in a bored moment thought it would be amusing to instil panic among nearby villagers by raising the alarm over an imaginary wolf. Not once or twice, but several times in sequence. And oh, how the boy must have laughed to see all those silly villagers scramble frantically up the hillside, armed with pitchforks and whatnot… only to be told: ‘Wolf? Nah, only joking! And you fell for it… AGAIN!’

Even if you didn’t already know the story, you would surely be able to guess what happened next. One fine day – spoiler alert! – a real wolf did indeed materialise; and, very predictably, the villagers refused to take the boy’s cries seriously when it mattered the most.  

As I recall, this is where the actual narrative ends… even though, being one of Aesop’s fables, there is also that annoying final line in which the author – not unlike an archaic version of Jerry Springer – spells out the ‘moral’ he intended us all to take on board. So the original Greek version concludes with the line: “This shows how liars are rewarded – even if they tell the truth, no one believes them”. 

Hmm. OK, maybe I’m a tad too critical as a reader, but… is that the only moral Aesop saw in this narrative? Did he not see any other lessons of far more practical relevance to the future reader? 

When I read that story as a child, my interpretation was completely different. Being somewhat obsessed with animals, I saw it as a story about wolves and sheep… with human beings only getting in the way of the real drama (as they always do). Naturally, my sympathies lay with the real victims of the tale. Not with that insufferable little pillock, who got what he so richly deserved in the end; nor even with the deceived villagers, who ultimately walked away from the incident unharmed.

No, it was all those poor fluffy white lambkins I felt sorry for… those hapless innocents who (presumably) died a horribly violent death, not because of any dishonesty on their own part… but because of their custodian’s astonishingly crass irresponsibility. 

From this perspective, Aesop’s moral suddenly seems out of place. Of course no one’s going to believe a liar, even when he tells the truth. We hardly needed Aesop to tell us that: it’s bleedingly obvious to anyone with even half a brain. No, what intrigues me is the underlying implication that it is never the liar himself who actually pays the full price for his own deceit. It is always the honest who end up worse off for their honesty. 

Indirectly, this applies also to the villagers who were initially taken in by the prank. Even if unharmed, their faith in human nature would have been shattered. So if another shepherd boy were to raise a similar alarm in future – and there was no need to suspect dishonesty – the villagers stung by this event would still have every reason to doubt the authenticity of the alarm. Sure, they might respond to it anyway, ‘just in case’… but having been bitten in the past, they would henceforth be forever mindful of the possibility that all shepherd boys are, by definition, just a bunch of irresponsible little liars. A pivotal pact of mutual trust had been breached; and without that trust, the bonds that keep entire societies knitted together begin to unravel.

That, for what it is worth, is the moral I would have inscribed at the end of the fable. “When people endowed with responsibility behave like irresponsible idiots, it is invariably others who will suffer as a result.”

Which brings us to the relevance of this ancient story to today’s reality. ‘Crying wolf’ has after all been a national pastime among Opposition parties in this country ever since I can remember. And I can remember quite a lot, too. A good deal more than the current Opposition and its leader, it would seem.

I remember, for instance, when former Opposition leader Alfred Sant had claimed to be ‘morally convinced’ of corruption under the Nationalist administration… with particular reference to the Presidential pardon given to convicted drug trafficker Francisco de Queiroz in 1994… even though no actual evidence of this particular instance of corruption was ever forthcoming.

More to the point, I also remember the outrage and opprobrium with which this claim was met (mostly by Nationalist commentators) at the time. Oh, how they howled! Almost as loudly as the wolf which nobody believed actually existed, until it was too late.

That was in the early 1990s; and as already indicated it was a Labour Opposition leader who cried ‘corruption’ at every turn. Fast forward 25 years, and oh look: it is now the Nationalist Opposition that engages in exactly the same tactic it had deplored so much when in government. Another day, another cry of ‘wolf’ from the rooftop of the Stamperija. How long before the country finally switches off, and no longer pays any attention to what will inevitably be dismissed as yet another false alarm?

The latest example concerns Simon Busuttil’s claim, during a live televised debate, that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had “taken a bribe” in the procedures leading to a fuel purchase agreement with Azeri company SOCAR. 

Pressed to substantiate this somewhat serious allegation – which would, if substantiated, necessitate criminal action against Muscat, and presumably his resignation as Prime Minister - Busuttil would later beat a hasty retreat. His accusations, we were told, had been based on “suspicion, not fact”.

“The way this government goes about its dealings raises suspicions about corruption and bribery. The government visited Azerbaijan without media or officials... and as such in these situations, suspicions of corruption are rife,” he told a journalist this week. “I don’t know if [Muscat] is corrupt or not, but the way he acts raises suspicions…”

Nor is this the first time the Opposition has cried ‘wolf’, before actually ascertaining the presence of any ‘Canis lupus’ in the vicinity. Last year, Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi likewise declared his own ‘moral conviction’ that the government had intervened in a police decision not to press charges against former EU Commissioner John Dalli. And who knows? Maybe he was right. Maybe there was political intervention in that case. Maybe there had also been political intervention when the police decided to arrest AD chairman Harry Vassallo on the eve of the 2008 election… or busted Cyrus Engerer’s father for drugs, the day after his son defected from PN to Labour.

These are all possibilities, but last I looked such possibilities needed to be proven before graduating to the level of fact. Where was Azzopardi’s proof at the time? Where were the facts that substantiated this serious allegation?

Personally, I shudder to think what would happen if the law courts started behaving like Busuttil today (or Sant in 1994). There would literally be no point in actually trying any particular case in a court of law. Anyone facing criminal charges is already, by definition, a ‘suspect’. And if guilt were to be determined only on the basis of suspicion, and not on fact… one would automatically be considered ‘guilty’ the moment one is charged in court, without any need for proof.

But in any case: that’s a little like Aesop’s moral... in the sense that it is too bleedingly obvious to even bother pointing out. Once again, it is the less obvious implications that interest me.

Let’s go back to the basics: i.e., a little shepherd boy tending his flock on a hillside. Does that boy have good reason to fear the approach of a wolf? Hell, yes. Those sheep represent his family’s livelihood. His entire job involves protecting them from danger, including wolves. And this is why the boy’s behaviour in Aesop’s fable is so appalling. It is not just a case of ‘telling lies’, as Aesop himself seemed to think some 2,600 years ago. It is a case of exposing others to danger as a result of reducing one’s own serious responsibilities to the level of a joke.

Now substitute that boy for an Opposition leader in 21st century Malta, and ask the same questions. Does Simon Busuttil have good reason to fear the onset of corruption in the present government? Hell, yes. It’s part of his job to be vigilant, and to hold the government to a higher standard of governance. Does he have a responsibility to maintain a degree of credibility in this issue? Of course he does. If the rest of the country can no longer take the Opposition leader’s claims seriously, there would literally be nothing to stop the wolf of corruption from making a meal of the entire country.

Yet neither Busuttil nor any of his predecessors has ever taken the responsibility of that office seriously. Busuttil in particular has had to clumsily backtrack from one corruption accusation after another, with the result that his next corruption accusation – which will probably come out tomorrow – will inevitably be dismissed as yet another unsubstantiated personal whim of his: a transparent effort to settle an old political score, after his own party had been unceremoniously booted out of office precisely over a case of (substantiated) corruption.

This leaves us with only one question of any relevance: who will pay the price for this breach of national trust? Who, in other words, will suffer the fate of the sheep entrusted to that shepherd boy’s care?

That, I greatly fear, will be people like you and I: people who have every reason to expect good governance in this country, but who have become so inured to mindless allegations of misconduct – year after year, week after week, regardless of who’s in government and who’s in opposition – that we can simply no longer place any trust at all in the people whose job it is to ward off corruption. So when corruption does strike, as it has struck in the past… we will all just shrug it off as an inevitable part of our political system, rather than as an unacceptable perversion of that system.

This also means that the only one to actually benefit from this state of affairs is none other than the wolf. Yes indeed. In the children’s story that is Maltese politics, the only discernible ‘moral’ to be gleaned is that honesty gets you nowhere… because the ‘Big Bad Wolf’ will always emerge victorious in the end.  

Nice ‘happy ending’ there, huh? Can’t wait for the sequel, in which the Three Bears finally catch Goldilocks stuffing her face with their porridge, and tear the screaming little brat limb to limb…