The godfathers of institutional rot

Keith Schembri exited court last week holding Paul Strathern’s book The Medici – Godfathers of the Renaissance.

Billed as the godfathers of the renaissance because they literally bankrolled some of the most important works of art and architecture, the Medici were a powerful banking family. They exerted great political power in Florence in the early 15th century.

The book was but a detail at the end of Schembri’s dramatic three-day testimony in the ongoing trial by jury of Yorgen Fenech. We don’t know whether Schembri fashions himself as some form of modern-day Medici—a godfather of Malta’s post-2013 Labour-led renaissance.

But from the witness stand he could not resist outlining how the Muscat administration grew the economy and ensured people had more money in their pockets. And Schembri’s job was “to create wealth”, he told jurors.

Because Schembri, first and foremost, was a businessperson before being a political person. He valued efficiency, productivity and a can-do attitude that sets key performance indicators and ensures they are achieved.

For businesses, the incoming Labour government of 2013 was a welcome contrast to the stuffiness and aloofness of the previous administration, where decisions kept being postponed and business ideas scuppered on the altar of procrastination.

The wind of change allowed business confidence to grow, leading to unprecedented economic expansion and wealth creation. As a result, ordinary people had more money in their pocket.

But this newfound business mentality at the heart of government—the Office of the Prime Minister—came with its problems. Big problems—and we are not referring to the economic model that has left public infrastructure creaking, communities feeling the brunt of unsocial behaviour and seeing public spaces being sacrificed for commercial gain. What we are referring to is the institutional rot that set in.

Good governance started to feel cumbersome, the rule of law was a nuisance, and enforcement a sin. Fairness was dispensed only to those who had the audacity to speak up and approach the powers that be. In the process more injustices were created. A climate of impunity started to take root. The closer to the corridors of power one was, the bolder one felt to do as they please.

The generation of wealth and the fact that people were living better masked these underlying ills. The cake kept growing and as long as this allowed people to take bigger or more slices, nothing else mattered. Not even the murder of a journalist.

The criminals behind Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder felt bold enough to do what they did because they believed it was par for the course; “business as usual”. They paused the hit job until the election was over and after the Labour Party was back in power with a strong majority they were told to “get on with it”. They believed they could get away with it and when the web started to unravel, they tried to rely on the support of those in power to avoid justice. They almost managed, aided by public officials seduced by the aura of power.

But evil has a way of unravelling itself. The testimony coming out of Yorgen Fenech’s trial gives credence to the phrase: ‘There is no honour among thieves.’ We’ve heard witnesses contradicting each other, accusing each other, and some clamming up in silence, evidently fearing retribution.

“I used to be mocked as a businessman... My job was to create wealth,” Schembri told jurors last week, adding that he had too many responsibilities to have time to become involved in the murder as Fenech’s defence has been suggesting.

We may never know the truth but what has become evidently clear so far is that Auberge de Castille in the Muscat years was the fulcrum of a renaissance of sleaze, where power, money and criminality blended together seamlessly.

From the lawyer who allegedly stood naked in Keith Schembri’s office, to a security officer who pranced around with guns in holster and who accidently discharged his firearm in the presence of Michelle Muscat, to the chief of staff posing for a photograph with Melvin Theuma after a meeting in which the latter was given a government job, to Schembri saying he does not know whether he lied to the police, the court testimony reads like a tragicomedy.

Unfortunately, the first victim of this sordid state of affairs was Daphne Caruana Galizia, who paid with her life on 16 October 2017. The ongoing victim is society that still pays the price of the institutional rot godfathered in Castille during those damning years.