Invasion of the closet skeletons

It would make a terrific computer game… a sort of mix between Silent Hill and Zombie Apocalypse, with a little Doom thrown in for good measure. But however you choose to play it, there are steadily mounting indications that the Opposition party frantically needs to annihilate all the skeletons wandering aimlessly about its own closet at the Stamperija. It needs to launch itself into a first-person action shooter mode, take out the old plasma gun and have a bit of a blast. Only then – when all the skeletons are gone – can it try playing that other game called ‘politics’ and actually be taken seriously.

Because it is, of course, a very serious game. And the Opposition plays a vital role in it, too; a role which tends to become more vital in situations where government simply turns around and says “all your base are belong to us”, as it seems to have just done with the annexation of the Presidency to its ever-growing Empire.

Well, three things happened this week to graphically remind us how sorely the above-mentioned skeleton massacre is needed. And above all, why it is now more important than ever to have a serious and dependable gamer in the Opposition seat…i.e., a time when government is busy appropriating other arms of the state – its latest trophy being the Office of the Presidency, which is now more or less a parliamentary secretariat within the Social Affairs Ministry.

With those kind of skeletons still lumbering around the Stamperija, who needs the Nationalist Party to tell us that political interference in police work is inevitably messy and dangerous?

One of those three things is in fact directly relevant to this development. Reacting to the appointment of Marie Louise Coleiro Preca as President, PN secretary general Chris Said had this to say: “She has to refrain from partisan politics and be a unifying president, similarly to her predecessors.”

Unfortunately, Said omitted to mention which of her predecessors had, in fact, been a ‘unifying president’. Seeing as four of the last five were former Cabinet ministers (and one a former prime minister) from previous Nationalist administrations, some of us would argue that it was simply beyond their physical capabilities to ever achieve that aim in practice… even if they actually bothered trying.

And in fact none of them did. Otherwise we wouldn’t be the same patently divided nation we are today. But none of them really tried, either: unless you count addressing a Nationalist mass meeting on the eve of the election (admittedly when no longer President, but when still bearing the title ‘President-Emeritus’) as an example of how the office of the Presidency can be used to ‘unify a nation’.

So exactly why Marie Louise Coleiro should suddenly be saddled with the responsibility of bridging Malta’s political divide – when all her PN-appointed predecessors were exonerated of that same responsibility, and in some cases even managed to widen the same divide further – is at best a little unclear. But the anomaly itself illustrates the basic problem when skeletons of the past overrun the entire Opposition party, and start shooting holes into all its arguments.

The problem is very simply this: there is barely a single area that concerns government policy of any kind whatsoever where the PN is well-positioned to comment. The Presidency is no exception: having appointed four successive Presidents from its own ranks, the PN has simply forfeited the right to ever complain again about political divisiveness coming from that particular direction. Nor can it realistically cry foul over the apparent annexation of the Presidency to government. Though it never did this quite as explicitly as this administration has done, for 20 of its years in power the Nationalist Party treated the presidency as its own unique preserve. It became a retirement home for its leaders and deputy-leaders, with the added perk of being able to occasionally resolve awkward situations for government… such as when President Ugo Mifsud Bonnici turned down a resignation offer by Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami because “it was not in the Nationalist interest”.

How can anyone still associated with any of those administrations possibly complain about Labour doing much the same thing today? And it is a question that applies to countless other areas, too.

The second reminder came courtesy of former parliamentary secretary for lands Jason Azzopardi, who this week contrasted the inaction of the police when confronted by the smart meter scandal – which he had earlier attributed to ‘political interference’ in police work – with government’s request for an investigation into the Café Premier bail-out.

“This government either has a warped sense of humour or an even more perverse set of priorities,” Azzopardi said.

Great. Now let’s look at the priorities of former governments, shall we? I don’t think we need to go into too much detail about the Premier business… other than perhaps to ask if the same Labour government would be willing to bail out any other Enemalta defaulter, too. As it happens I have a pending bill with the energy provider... and I might add that it’s nowhere near €4.2 million. So how about, you know, a little sauce to go with that gander, huh?

But again, while the rest of us common mortals are quite rightly miffed at seeing outrageous (and outrageously arbitrary) decisions like this on an almost daily basis… the PN can hardly even squeak, either on this issue or – even less – on the issue of interference in police investigations. For one thing, we have yet to know the extent of the water and electricity bills racked up by PN kazini all over the island, and which is reported to constitute a not insignificant portion of the national(ist) debt.

As for police interference: well, some of those skeletons I mentioned earlier are still wearing their police uniforms. I seem to recall a rather well-known case in which a former (Nationalist) prime minister not only interfered directly with a police attempted murder investigation, but even carried out the investigation himself: interrogating suspects, arranging Presidential pardons, the works. And just look how that case turned out in the end…

More recently we have seen arrest warrants targeting people for seemingly political reasons, and at incredibly convenient moments for the party in government at the time (I’ll leave you to guess which one that was). So Green Party leader Harry Vassallo gets served with a warrant almost literally on the eve of an election; while the father of former Nationalist activist Cyrus Engerer finds himself arrested the day after his son resigns from the PN and joins Labour instead.

With those kind of skeletons still lumbering around the Stamperija, who needs the Nationalist Party to tell us that political interference in police work is inevitably messy and dangerous?

Then there’s that small matter of the golden passport scheme. Remember? The one which was described as ‘prostitution’ of our national identity by Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, who also warned of Maltese passports falling into the hands of mafia bosses, drug traffickers, African warlords and invading aliens from the star system Vega?

Just yesterday, the same Busuttil announced that there would be no grounds to withdraw passports issued under the IIP scheme, now that it had been accepted by the Commission. More than a case of stating the thunderingly obvious, it was actually a gross oversimplification on Busuttil’s part. Not only were there never any grounds to withdraw citizenship to begin with; but it would have also been a violation of human rights under the European Charter… and as such, there would have been grounds aplenty to sue the Maltese government for human rights infringement over every single passport withdrawn.

Busuttil cannot claim that he hadn’t been warned about this state of affairs beforehand. All the relevant experts, including the Attorney General and all Constitutional lawyers, told him up front that stripping people of citizenship would be a crime.

So more than a case of skeletons in the closet – because, to be frank, there was never an issue quite so bizarre to have to discuss previously – this one looks like a spooky vision of the possible future in a mystical, magical mirror. It tells us what sort of behaviour we could expect from a government with the same man at the helm. And in classic gothic horror fashion, the portents do not exactly look good.

All this comes at a time when the Labour government is steamrolling ahead with some pretty outlandish stuff of its own. Following the Presidency affair, the latest is that ministry meetings with constituents are to take place at Labour Party kazini… you know, just in case anyone had missed the part when the same Labour government candidly admitted it doesn’t even know the difference between a government, and the political party which happens to occupy it at any given moment…

Yet when you turn to the Opposition to enquire how it intends opposing this lunacy… all you see are the somnambulating skeletons of all the PN’s past errors and misjudgements, all stumbling towards you with vacant eye-sockets and outstretched bony fingers.

Time for a little hack and slash, I would say. And don’t come back before every last one of those zombies has been exterminated…