Did somebody say corruption?

There must be some direct correlation between the loss of people’s faith in politics and politicians’ silliness. Someone should start by asking why the Nationalist party deputy leader for party affairs Beppe Fenech Adami is finding it so difficult to talk some real sense when he presents himself to the press. Who is he trying to impress, and who is he trying to communicate with?

The son to former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami said last Thursday that the visa scam and the police arrests that followed at Identity Malta were evident proof of the widespread institutionalised corruption in the government.

I have no doubt that there is such a thing as institutionalised corruption, but what Beppe is not admitting to and saying is that this corruption has been with us since both Beppe and myself shared the same school bus that took us to the same Catholic school in Sliema.

It was there when the British ruled Malta and it continued well after. And this culture of kickbacks is ingrained in Maltese and Gozitan society and then continued to flourish even as recently as under Eddie Fenech Adami’s tenure. It did not suddenly surface on 10 March, 2013. It seems to be part of our DNA.

The truth is that civil servants and other appointees in the departments that dealt with residence permits have been replicating what their peers have been doing for ages. 

But politically speaking, had Commissioner of Police Michael Cassar halted the investigations then there is little doubt that Beppe should have cried wolf. Rightfully.

But the contrary is true. Investigations have resulted in arrests.

A few weeks earlier, Beppe played out the same act. Joe Sammut, a former Labour Party treasurer back in the mid-1990s, was arraigned in connection with an alleged visa scam. His misdemeanours did not start on the 9 March, 2013. They had been going on for ages at a time when Beppe was then a comfortable parliamentary assistant with sweet little FA to do.

Once again, Beppe raced to the press and decried that this was yet more hard evidence that Muscat was synonymous with corruption. Weeks before that, he decided that a bar in Valletta was the roosting ground for criminals and delinquents, lumping everyone together for the fact that the minister for the economy Chris Cardona kept some company in this watering hole. In the process of hitting out at Cardona, ruining the reputation of the bar owner and any of the professionals who frequent did not seem a concern as long political point-scoring is the game.

On the other hand Beppe would have been justified if he had proposed that the whole system needed a revamp.

He was completely justified in calling for Ray Zammit not to be appointed the head of new local enforcement authority. The former acting police chief should not be given any position, not after revelations of his business interests and those of his two sons, showed how they were intertwined with people who might possibly be at the end of some investigation – such as the Gaffarenas (of recently taken in by Labour sympathies, after decades of Nationalist loyalty, even entering into business with former PN secretary-general Joe Saliba). The fact that under Labour they were deployed back from police stations, ostensibly moved there for disciplinary purposes, and then moved into the sensitive economic crimes unit, also raises many questions.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is bloody wrong in ignoring the negative signs being given out by going ahead with Ray Zammit’s appointment. He cannot simply look the other way.

But as long as there is no evidence that police commissioner Michael Cassar is being told what to do, Beppe Fenech Adami cannot simply come forward and speak up without any solid proof of the collusion between the politicians and organised corruption, or the lack of police action.

Beppe’s knee-jerk reactions are not getting the Nationalist Party anywhere. And this comes on the back of Busuttil’s conjuring up of a ‘public security’ threat with the removal of vilification of religion from the Criminal Code. This country needs an opposition, not angry boy scouts.

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Europe is a far cry from the Jacques Delors years. It started to crumble under Barroso, and is also reaching a low point under this crop of EU leaders despite Jean Claude Juncker’s apparently ‘best’ efforts. There is no Europe, just a team of countries who have such parochial, vested national interests, that there is little hope for the future.

The Eastern European countries are caught in a time warp. A reflection of their political and social insularity, and Christian bigotry. The Poles, Slovaks and Hungarians come tops for embracing anti-refugee policies. And it is shocking, considering that these countries experienced the ravages of war and also the generosity of other nations’ good will.

In 1956, and I was not around then, Maltese families were enthusiastically called to donate clothes and food to Hungarian families who had been displaced after the Russian invasion. Memories are short, so short that most people forget the millions that were displaced by conflict.

Europe met and decided to distribute 120,000 people, but they seem to have got their maths wrong. There are in fact some 700,000 displaced people in Europe. Malta got its share, a ridiculous 180-plus individuals.

Malta of course pretends to be suffering from the influx of people from Africa and the Middle East. It is not. We have never had it ‘better’ when it comes to migratory influxes. 

But Facebook users still continue to spew up their hatred on those who offer some sympathy to the plight of these displaced people. The social media is the only place left for the uncultured masses who relish in expressing their unfettered hatred.

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The United States has reached out, in its publicly sympathetic way, for the public’s understanding on the need for Malta to sign a Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA).

On this point there is thankfully, bipartisan agreement.

Malta should not give in to American bullying. And I have chosen my words carefully: bullying. I do not share the illusion that the world is better with the US as policeman. And if there is just one good reason to oppose a SOFA it’s the contentious issue of civil and criminal liability of US military personnel, who can only be tried in the US. 

The Cavalese cable car disaster of 1998 northeast of Trento is a case in point. 20 died when a US Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler aircraft flew low, against regulations, cutting the cable supporting a cable car. The pilot, Captain Richard J. Ashby, and his navigator, Captain Joseph Schweitzer, were put on trial in the United States and were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter and negligent homicide. 

19 Europeans died that day, eight Germans, five Belgians, three Italians, two Poles, one Austrian and one Dutch.

There are of course numerous other examples where US personnel have been involved in manslaughter or murder cases and then treated lightly in an American court.

If there was a good time for consensus, then this is the time. Say no to SOFA.