Robert Abela’s behaviour in the Jean Paul Sofia case would be worryingly childish if it weren’t worryingly corrupt. Parliament debated a motion yesterday asking for an inquiry to establish if the government had done less than it should have to avoid Mr Sofia’s untimely death. An inquiry would act independently (of anyone, not just the government) and the outcome of its investigations would be limited to a report documenting the facts and a set of recommendations weighted only by the value of their moral authority.
A public inquiry could find state responsibility which can range from wilful complicity in wrongdoing to failure to meet some positive obligation to ensure safety. Wilful complicity would become a criminal matter. Let us assume there wasn’t any of that and an inquiry would not find some minister pushed the roof over Mr Sofia’s head.
Logically what would be left for the inquiry to find would be matters not criminal. If there’s negligence (like for example lack of enforcement of existing rules or failure to keep laws up to date with accepted standards) you’d probably expect a resignation of some line minister and their replacement with someone armed with a commitment to rectify the failures to avoid their repetition.
It’s possible an inquiry does not find negligence but simply records lessons from the event that could benefit future situations, provide hindsight to the foresight needed to avoid another untimely and then certainly unnecessary death.
This is a summary of benefits from and reasons why public inquiries are held following serious incidents where state failure is suspected to have made a contribution to the loss of life.
I watched recently a good film that told the story of the 22 July 2011 attacks in Norway. A lone terrorist killed 8 people with a car bomb in Oslo’s government district and, on that same day, shot point blank 69 people in a massacre at a gathering of teenage political activists.
The Norwegian prime minister very early on ordered an inquiry, quite independently of the criminal investigation into the lone gunman that led to his prosecution. The inquiry found state failures: things the government and the security services ought to have done to prevent this greatest loss of life in time of peace.
As it happened the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, did not resign following the publication of the inquiry report. The film (22 July, available on Netflix) essentially depicts the families of the victims rejecting the notion of the prime minister’s resignation out of hand saying that despite his sorrow and responsibility they do not blame him for the incident and want him instead to lead the country through the healing.
Perhaps all that is a bit romanticised. I do not wish to point to historical example from my knowledge of it learnt from a fictionalised film. I do not know enough to filter out any romanticisation.
But even if this was pure fiction, as a contrast with Robert Abela’s behaviour, it is a very illuminating source. The fact is leadership is respected and respectable when it is accountable, when one is ready to face up to the facts and when these are made known to any consequences arising from them.
The amendment to the PN’s motion calling for an independent inquiry which the government put forward yesterday is the ultimate act of childish failure to own up and live up to one’s responsibility. A public inquiry holds the government to account and it is something within the power of the government to launch immediately. Instead, Robert Abela is proposing a parliamentary resolution addressed to an inquiring magistrate urging them to hurry the hell up.
We have separation of powers in this country, in theory if nowhere else. Though a parliamentary resolution urging a magistrate to cut corners in her investigation may or may not be strictly illegal or unconstitutional, it is at least in excess of the restraint that should be expected of the other branches of government when dealing with the judiciary. Neither Parliament, nor government, except through the adoption of laws, should be telling individual members of the bench what to do and by when. That behaviour is the opposite of respecting judicial independence, which is essential to a democracy.
The only way time limits can be imposed on judicial processes is by law, not by some political declaration forced through Parliament to help Robert Abela dodge an accountability bullet. Admittedly, a magisterial inquiry is only judicial in so far as it is conducted by a magistrate. It is more of an investigative matter. But it’s entrusted to a magistrate precisely because the executive has its own way of getting to the bottom of things and it’s good to have a backup outside the control of the executive. Robert Abela is clearly unwilling to respect that boundary.
If Robert Abela is dissatisfied with the fact that prosecutions have not commenced in Mr Sofia’s case, why is he complaining about the magistrate? It’s not like she’s in the way. Nothing, not even the fact that the magisterial inquiry is still underway, stops the police from pressing charges. Nothing stops the police from asking the magistrate to send them the file of her inquiry and get the attorney general’s approval to start prosecution. Why doesn’t Robert Abela’s resolution say anything about that?
The fact is this can’t be just childish. It’s impossible to believe that the only reason this public inquiry is not starting is because Robert Abela has already said it won’t and he can’t bring himself to climb down, like the fragile infant that he is.
It’s worse than childish. It has to be. The opposition (which has handled the Jean Paul Sofia case with an exquisite balance between tact and respect for the victim’s family and the vehemence which is entirely appropriate in the face of the government’s callousness) is justified in its loud expressions of suspicion that Robert Abela is covering up for someone.
There are reports that Robert Abela is facing backlash from his MPs who are questioning the wisdom of voting against a resolution that does no more than respond to a mother’s call for the facts around her son’s death to be established. The rebelling MPs – whose courage is unlikely to survive the day and the threats of Robert Abela – are at least stopping as far as to wonder why they should be covering up for someone, whoever they are, who may have brought about the early and entirely innocent death of a young man.
You see, we keep drawing parallels between the case of Mr Sofia and the case of Daphne Caruana Galizia when for two years Joseph Muscat’s government pushed back on calls for a public inquiry on the back of the now repeated excuse that a criminal inquiry is very much enough. Which it isn’t.
But in one respect the two cases are not the same. All Labour MPs – even the ones who have since retired and found, late in their life, a sanctimonious virginity which must have been entirely dormant in the aftermath of October 2017 – had reason to fear the truth about Daphne Caruana Galizia’s killing. They knew her work. They suspected it was the cause of her death. They feared that documenting the relationship between her work and her killing would cost them their political future.
This time some Labour MPs are not following Robert Abela in making the same sort of connection. But Robert Abela knows something they don’t know and he doesn’t know quite how to explain it to them: corruption kills. It killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. It might surprise them to learn it killed Jean Paul Sofia too. And this inquiry, unburdened by the blind prejudice that many people had against Daphne Caruana Galizia even after she was killed, might challenge the corrupt order of things in ways the Daphne inquiry could not.
Robert Abela can’t risk that. This could be it.