Looking back at 2021 | The Daphne public inquiry - where do we go from here?

The public inquiry into the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia was a moment of reckoning for the Labour Party, but also for the Maltese nation. 

The inquiry’s conclusions came one month after Malta was placed on the FATF greylist, and a few more months after Keith Schembri, the party’s one-time strategist and aide to former prime minister Joseph Muscat, was charged for money laundering and corruption. 

It took two years of campaigning by civil society for the government to set up a public inquiry commission in September 2019. Calls for an independent public inquiry started mere days after Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder in October 2017. These calls culminated with a resolution issued by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe calling on the government to establish, “within three months”, an independent public inquiry. 

Three months later, five days before the deadline, Muscat’s government set up the public inquiry commission. It would be one of the last acts of Muscat, a month before his disgraced exit with the arrest of Yorgen Fenech and the resignation of his chief of staff Keith Schembri. 

The Caruana Galizia family had first raised concerns over the choice of two members, namely Anthony Abela Medici – the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations at the time of the appointment – and Prof. Ian Refalo, who was a legal representative of the FIAU and Adrian Hillman, both subjects of Caruana Galizia’s reports. They were duly replaced. 

Then the inquiry exceeded its deadline twice, with the board complaining of undue pressure as Robert Abela’s government consistently accused the inquiry of ‘overstepping its remit’ and becoming politicised. Abela even admitted he had reservations over the terms of reference for the inquiry, dubbing it an “experiment” that was failing to keep to the terms of reference given. 

But in July, Abela accepted the findings with grace and apologise for the State’s shortcomings when it should have protected Daphne Caruana Galizia. 

The inquiry proposed several wide-ranging changes to Maltese law and public life. It reiterated past recommendations made by the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission and GRECO (Group of European states against Corruption), while proposing amendments to Maltese criminal law regarding financial institutions and other organisations to prevent “a de facto state of impunity”. 

The inquiry board further recommended that the politics of sanctioning irregularities and illegalities must be reduced to a minimum, applicable only in exceptional cases, propsing criminal offences for the obstruction of police investigations or the abuse of office among public servants. 

For journalists, the inquiry said that a police unit “well-versed in media law and the value of journalism” should be specifically set up to protect them from intimidation, harassment, and insults and hate crimes. 

The post-Muscat Labour administration has shown initiative in strengthening rule-of-law, albeit due to pressure from the European Commission, Moneyval, the Council of Europe and its Venice Commission. 

But changes in judicial and police appointments do little in addressing the culture of impunity that the inquiry board warned so heavily about. The inquiry’s proposals are much-needed changes, but rule of law is not strengthened by simply changing how the guardians of the law get appointed to their position. It also about the laws themselves – whether the law protects minority groups, holds people accountable, is enforceable by independent judiciaries, and so on. 

The Opposition has a role too. The law-making process must be a democratic exercise with a plurality of voices and opinions (the PN even failed to provide an opposing stance on the cannabis reform, offering no amendments or recommendations despite the backing of dozens of NGOs. Instead, it “diminished” itself to being a mere commentator in the parliamentary process, as if it held no seat in parliament to begin with). 

What the public inquiry did not mention, because it was not within their remit, was the political structures that foster clientelism and impunity – Malta lacks rules that punish clientelism without any serious checks and balances on what MPs or ministers do with their government powers. 

Rule of law is stronger now than it was in 2019. But there are major flaws, not in our reforms but in the political culture, some of which go beyond good governance.  

Possibly the most glaring flaw is the failure to dismiss politicians, most especially in Cabinet, for their political shortcomings. As the governing party, it is Labour that should be setting the standard. But even when education minister Justyne Caruana was revealed to have used her unfettered discretion to gift her partner a €15,000 contract,  with government procurement regulations flouted, Abela did not even deign a slap on the wrist – at least not publicly – over her misdemeanour. Caruana only resigned days after, no doubt by some behind-the-scenes pressure. She is now contesting the decision in a Constitutional case... even if she has declared she will not run for politics in 2022. 

In the short term, the public inquiry brought us face-to-face with the political shortcomings of the State in protecting Daphne Caruana Galizia. In the longer term, its impact will mostly likely be felt once government starts dishing out reforms in line with the inquiry recommendations. 

The real benchmark by which we measure the public inquiry’s impact must not be the quality of government’s reforms but the government’s ability, and willingness, to hold people accountable for their actions.  

If Robert Abela fails to take action, publicly and transparently, against Cabinet members that have breached ethics, then it would appear that he has not grasped the public inquiry’s most important lesson after all.