Ir-Realta case: who is politically responsible?

If Malta had a sensible mainstream, albeit conservative  government, the state would  not have persevered in pressing charges against a writer and a political activist who were found not guilty of obscenity in a court of law.  Any  sensible mainstream government would have advised the attorney general to  stop the crazy attempt to criminalize literature.  

Even if the AG acted independently of government, I cannot fathom how government has not sent a clear message that it is not in the business of sending young people to prison for writing and publishing literature.  This is surely not the European way of doing things.

The decision to appeal is symptomatic of a government which has drifted to the loony right.  As amply proved by the divorce debate in parliament, the Nationalist Party has ceased to be the voice of cautious modernization and Europeanization.  It has ceased to be a moderating voice which reconciles conservativism and liberalism. 

The conservatives in the party have outstretched themselves, taking their party away from the middle ground to more extreme moral positions which alienate not just liberals, but also moderate elements who do not feel comfortable with ultra-conservatism. 

Perhaps not much has changed within the party since Fenech Adami's time, except that Maltese society has changed making what was acceptable a decade ago intolerable now.  And more fundamentally the party no longer has the EU's magic wand to keep the liberals onboard.

This overtly moralistic drive erodes the government's appeal to rational thinking in other spheres like immigration,  economics and foreign affairs; three areas where the Labour opposition still appears flimsy, absent  or overtly populist.   But how can one take seriously a Finance Minister who speaks about God, the Holy Spirit, car manuals and Ferraris in one sentence?  And how can one feel at ease with a government which still believes in censorship.

Lawrence Gonzi cannot divorce himself from this reality.  If he is not part of this madness he must act swiftly as he did before the last election on the environment when he dropped golf courses and took upon a green (dis)guise not to lose middle class votes.  But this time round Gonzi has already compromised himself so much that he appears to be part of the problem.  Gonzi seems unable or unwilling to steer his party into becoming a modern centrist force, capable of communicating with that part of the middle class which has moved on with the times.