I’m just back from the vigil held in front of Castille calling for a public inquiry into the circumstances of the killing of Jean Paul Sofia. Everyone there knew on their way that the official mission of the vigil had already been accomplished. It looked throughout the day that Robert Abela was going to have to give in to pressure and “listen” to the people. Indeed at 18:30, 90 minutes before the massive protest outside his office, he announced that a public inquiry would indeed be held.
After I left the vigil, Robert Abela showed up walking right past the candles left by protesters in front of a poster bearing Jean Paul Sofia’s face. Presumably Robert Abela was looking to be credited for a protest called against him. Perhaps he’ll be expecting to be admired for what he must flatter himself into thinking is courage. But he’s nothing less than a jester in a court of clowns.
If he had called an inquiry when it was asked of him to do so, if he had consented to the opposition’s vote last week, if he had taken the advice of his bemused MPs, if he had listened when all he wanted to do was speak, there would have been no protest today and instead we’d be on the road to know the failures of his government in protecting Jean Paul Sofia’s life and the lives of so many victims of mad destructive construction.
He was booed and jeered out of the square to chants of pulċinell. And it is impossible to guess if his puerile brain anticipated and desired just that reaction in some misguided plan to portray himself as a victim at a vigil for a 20 year old man killed by a building on public land, or that he didn’t expect that reaction at all and expected rather the realisation of a lunatic fantasy where he would be worshipped by a crowd protesting his decisions.
In principle, there’s nothing wrong with someone, even a prime minister, realising that they lost an argument and admit to changing their mind. But consider the circumstances of this case.
For months, Robert Abela ignored Jean Paul Sofia’s mother, Isabelle Bonnici’s pleas for a public inquiry. When the opposition forced on him a debate in Parliament he unleashed the whip on his MPs, even those who were privately or semi-privately telling him this was a mistake. As Jean Paul Sofia’s father shouted down at him from Parliament’s Stranger’s Gallery and as Jean Paul Sofia’s mother cried in agony outside the building’s door, Robert Abela put on his best macho man look and rushed right past.
His TV station went into over-drive running propaganda with the simple message that a public inquiry was a bad thing, the wrong thing to do. In the foreground of that message the even nastier messages that Jean Paul Sofia’s mourning relatives were puppets of the PN and that they were only after the money.
By today the political carpet was pulled under the prime minister’s feet. Labour figures threatened him with open rebellion. After just yesterday publishing on its newspaper a cryptic warning that today’s protest in Valletta was the work of obscure anti-Labour forces, the General Workers’ Union announced today it was backing the protest and the call for an independent inquiry. It was clear that senior Labour Party rebels were mobilising branches of the Labour Party machine against the party leader getting to switch sides and turning the guns to face the boss.
Joseph Muscat rode on the back of the rebellion stabbing his successor in the front. Et tu ioseph cried Robert Abela as he fell on his knees. By then the palace coup was done. Robert Abela has not been removed but he has been emasculated, neutralised, his braggadocio exposed, his bluff called once and for all.
Palace dramas behind closed doors is how our polity is run now. Consider this.
Just five days ago Parliament, in theory and according to the Constitution, the highest institution of the land, the entity in which the people’s sovereignty resides, voted down a motion to have a public inquiry. Instead Parliament adopted a resolution that implicitly decided that a public inquiry should not in fact be called. Robert Abela, MP, voted alongside Parliament’s majority incidentally.
Today, just five days later, Robert Abela the prime minister has wiped his arse with Parliament’s resolution and decided to do exactly the opposite of what Parliament said he should do: he has called a public inquiry. Now, as you know, I strongly agree there should be a public inquiry. But I also believe we should have a Parliamentary democracy and before the government ignores the instructions it gets from Parliament the least the government should do is go back to Parliament and ask for new instructions.
The heading of an earlier version of this post was ‘Parlament għaż-żobb’ for indeed we have to wonder why we have a Parliament at all if Robert Abela gets it to say what he wants on Wednesday and ignores what it says by Monday.
Consider also how the prime minister has passed through Parliament a resolution that doubles down on two formal letters and several aggressive public remarks he has made applying pressure on the chief justice to have the criminal inquiry into the death of Jean Paul Sofia wrapped up pronto. Today he said he was deciding on the independent inquiry because “the government would not be held hostage by the courts”.
Let’s break that down. Firstly, that means he’s calling the public inquiry for entirely wrong reasons, to replace and compensate for the fact that the judicial process is not to his satisfaction. By that logic the public inquiry would be what it absolutely should never be, something that competes with and undermines the judicial process.
Secondly, how is it that a judicial process and it’s timing can in and of itself “hold the government hostage”? The judicial branch is not accountable to the prime minister. That is why we have judicial independence. If indeed there are criminals the prime minister is covering up for, the last thing we need is a judiciary being chased to wrap up the process prematurely.
And unconfirmed reports suggest the prime minister, using his leather condom Victoria Buttigieg, has actually set up the relevant magistrate today by leading her himself to extend the inquiry, a decision he would then use to publicly bash her with. Don’t blame the magistrate. Playing nasty political games with prime ministers is neither in their job description much less in their entry requirements.
Not that how long the magistrate takes is relevant to how quickly prosecutions can start. Unlike the judiciary the police are indeed accountable to the prime minister. Why hasn’t the prime minister asked them when they plan to start prosecutions?
But let’s not digress… too much.
In this case Robert Abela, the chief executive, has undercut the two other branches that are Constitutionally best defined as needing to be independent of him. He has ignored an explicit decision of Parliament and he has bullied the judiciary. Neither the Parliamentary Speaker (a puppet of the government if ever there was one), nor the Chief Justice (whose failure to protect the judicial branch from executive encroachment is becoming increasingly inexplicable) so much as batted an eyelid.
Through Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela the public has voted resoundingly in support of these all-powerful autocrats. Any objection to their suppression of the rule of law was met with the rationalisation “erbgħin elf”. Muscat and Abela enjoy popular support so they are entitled to sweep away Constitutional restraint, goes the Musumecian philosophy.
The public loved it, at least the majority that supported them.
Here are the consequences. An all-powerful prime minister who can at will force all his 40 MPs in Parliament to vote on a resolution manifestly against their conscience even if they consider it a mistake is met by no checks and balances. Their mistakes are unavoidable because to many people’s surprise, even Invictus Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela Qalb in-Nies are human. The more unstoppable power the prime minister wields, the greater the consequences of their mistakes.
Robert Abela didn’t stop to think about Parliament’s views when today he decided he needed to swerve 180 degrees. The last thing on his mind as he tried to bare his teeth in the direction of the courts for the delight of an angry audience was respecting judicial independence.
You see, democracies are slower and sometimes frustratingly ineffective. But they fuck up far less than autocracies. Also democracies bring about the smooth transition of power between parties, and governments lose elections before arrogance seeps in so deeply that their mistakes are too painful to bear. But as Labour became the only viable party in this country it stopped fearing the public mood.
And the thing is, in spite of all the self-praise, leaders of autocracies are overcompensating mediocrities. Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela are the Saints Cosmas and Damian of mediocrities.
Joseph Muscat, with all his Muscatonomics, has driven the country’s economic model into a hell-hole. He had the audacity today to say that there should be an inquiry into all the deaths on construction sites when he is personally responsible for the building frenzy of the last decade, for the importation and ghettoization of brown labour, and for the grotesque power enjoyed by the deceptively named development cabal which he continues to work for as consultant even after his retirement in disgrace from government.
And Robert Abela is an infant, with the empathy to match his maturity. I’ll leave you with one consideration he made today as he justified his U-turn. He said today he decided to call for a public inquiry because he’s a father. His poor daughter will one day read this and when she’s grown up enough she’ll ask her father if he had utterly forgotten her during the seven months he refused Jean Paul Sofia’s mother’s pleas for a public inquiry.
Come to think of it, Robert Abela is going to have many of those conversations over the next several days.
All those MPs who out of loyalty to him allowed themselves to be persuaded to vote against the motion for a public inquiry will be telling Robert Abela that now he’s the only hero who “listened to the people” while they, who had their ears to the ground all the time while the prime minister’s were drowned by the sound of the roaring engines of his yacht, were forced by him to seem indifferent to Jean Paul Sofia’s family’s obvious pain.
The justice minister Jonathan Attard will be pointing out to Robert Abela that while the prime minister did his afternoon jog on the Ragusa promenade he, Attard, was on One TV with the execrable Karl Stagno Navarra lying to the public about what a public inquiry actually does. After dissing it he’s now had to stand by as Robert Abela set it up.
All those Labour Party trolls and fanatic idol worshippers who, thinking they were following the footsteps of the great leader, publicly cursed Jean Paul Sofia’s family as money grabbing Nationalists have been left by Robert Abela to hang in embarrassment if they knew where shame even lived.
Isabelle Bonnici, Jean Paul Sofia’s mother, alongside Peppi Azzopardi who has been helping her, urged the crowd outside Castille to be grateful to Robert Abela and not to complicate the issue with any political resentment about his conduct. That was met with frustration by some in the crowd. But I understand where she’s coming from.
Ultimately she knows that the PN opposition, however beneficial their support for her cause has been, and critics of the government can only do so much in the face of an autocracy ruled by Robert Abela. She needed supporters of the Labour Party to support her. An opposition motion did not turn Robert Abela. A rebellion by his senior ministers turned him. A stab in his belly from Joseph Muscat turned him.
She had him where she wanted him. Good on her.
Robert Abela, on the other hand, is now no more than a mute mannequin in shorts and a baseball cap worn the wrong way round.