Is it a bird? A plane? Well, that depends…

We can, I suppose, be reasonably certain it isn’t Superman. It is, after all, rather difficult  for DC comics superheroes to actually be spotted ‘up there, in the sky’, when we all know they don’t exist.

So whatever it is you saw, travelling ‘faster than a speeding bullet’ (which incidentally also rules out the ‘bird’ hypothesis…) we can safely eliminate Clark Kent’s alter-ego from our list of suspects.

But that, I fear, is the extent of our certainty in the matter. Any matter. It doesn’t have to actually involve unidentified flying objects in fancy blue and red costumes. Even much more pertinent, relevant questions are becoming increasingly difficult to answer, in a world where the ‘truth’ seems to vary according to different interests and perspectives.

Take, for instance, a question like: what caused the Russian air disaster in the Sinai peninsula on 31 October? Was it an accident, or a terrorist attack?

Given that over 200 people died in the tragedy, and that their grieving families have a right to know the truth… not to mention all the safety/security implications for both scenarios… I’d say that’s a rather important question to answer. And on the surface, it seems a fairly straightforward choice between two factual possibilities. Either there was a bomb on the plane – as claimed by ISIS, which took responsibility for the attack – or there wasn’t. No other option, really.

Logic therefore dictates that one should await the emergence of evidence – which, in plane crash investigations, tends to eventually come to light – before venturing an entirely useless opinion about what ‘might have happened’. 

But then again, logic only comes into the equation if you really are interested in establishing the truth. Judging by media reports, this isn’t always the case. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from a Reuters report on reactions by world leaders: “British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday it was increasingly likely a bomb brought down a Russian airliner over Egypt with the loss of 224 lives, and U.S. President Barack Obama said Washington was taking that possibility ‘very seriously’.

“But Moscow, which launched air strikes against Islamist fighters including Islamic State in Syria more than a month ago, said it was premature to reach conclusions that the flight was attacked…”

Separately, the airline itself has already excluded the bomb hypothesis out of hand: “[Metrojet] ‘absolutely’ excludes technical failure, pilot error or ‘a human factor’ as the cause of the crash. The company did not provide any evidence to support those statements.”

Elsewhere, the widow of one of the co-pilots has also claimed that, “her husband had complained about the mechanical condition of the plane… [and] said before the flight that the ‘technical condition of the airplane left much to be desired’.”

Incidentally, not a jot of evidence has so far been brought forward in support of any of these claims.

OK, something must also be said for the ‘balance of probabilities’ argument; that, while neither ‘bomb’ nor ‘accident’ theory can be proven at this stage, both are possibilities worth studying in their own right. 

The problem is, both seem equally plausible. I have never flown on a Russian airline, and for all I know they might be the best in the world. But back in the day, the name ‘Aeroflot’ doubled up as a standard aviation industry joke… much in the same way as ‘Skoda’ did for cars. Perhaps it was a Cold War era prejudice (I’ve never driven a Skoda, either)… but it gives you an idea of how Russian safety standards in transport technology are perceived on a global level.

You cannot (as Metrojet did) realistically exclude the possibility of ‘technical’ or ‘human error’. I would argue you never can in any scenario, anyway… and in this one least of all.

As for terrorism: we live in an age when any form of atrocity, on any scale, against any target, has become perfectly conceivable. So yes, of course, like Obama we all take that possibility ‘very seriously’, too.

But we are still no nearer to establishing what happened. All we now know with any certainty is how each (involved) spectator would like things to have happened. Which is of course totally irrelevant… but interesting all the same. 

Let’s start with Vladimir Putin, president of the country whose airline (according to the bomb theory) was successfully targeted by a terrorist organisation. In case his vested interest wasn’t already clear, Reuters even spelt it out for us in the above quote: Putin, “[who] launched air strikes against Islamist fighters including Islamic State in Syria more than a month ago…”

Other reports, like this one in the Guardian, go a step further: “But by making an enemy of Isis, Putin has put Russia directly in the firing line. This will not go down well with the Russian public, which showed little support for other recent Russian interventions, in Crimea and eastern Ukraine…”

One could easily add another accusation to the list: having ‘made an enemy of ISIS’, Putin did not do enough to ensure the safety of his citizens from reprisals. That implies a political responsibility, and on its own this is often regarded as grounds enough for resignation (by a curious coincidence, the Romanian government has just resigned over a fire in a nightclub that killed a number people).

Putin’s interest is therefore very clear. But… who cares? The object of any inquiry into this tragedy is not to undermine the Russian premier, or spare him any blushes. It is to find out whether or not there was a bomb, regardless how Putin or anyone else is affected.

As for Cameron and Obama: well, let’s just say that neither gets on particularly well with old Vladimir at the moment, and both are probably ‘enjoying’ (in an entirely tasteful political/diplomatic way, of course) his current embarrassment. A conspiracy theorist might add that they are exploiting the issue to destabilise his regime. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Whether it was a bomb or human error is already an irrelevance… for all parties, the desired truth has become more important that the truth itself.

You will by now surely have seen about a million parallels between all of the above, and most of what happens here. Off the top of my head I can come up with dozens of cases where seemingly simple ‘yes/no’ questions – was there corruption in this or that issue? Is there political responsibility to be shouldered? Should disciplinary action be taken? Etc, etc – are decided on the basis of what Government and/or Opposition wants the answer to be.

The attempted assassination of Richard Cachia Caruana in the 1990s immediately springs to mind. Was the crime masterminded by convicted drug trafficker Meinrad Calleja, as claimed by main prosecution witness Joseph Fenech? Or did Fenech hoodwink the prime Minister to get himself off the hook?

A classic case of a material truth to be uncovered by material evidence, if ever I saw one…

yet long before the courts reached a verdict, politicians on both sides had waded into the scrum with their own ‘moral convictions’ either way. Former Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami even doubled up as a main character witness; Opposition leader Alfred Sant exploited his involvement for years to discredit the Nationalist administration. 

And all along, the actual question of ‘whodunit’ retreated ever further into the background, until it was almost no longer visible at all. All that mattered from that point on was how the political fortunes of either side would be affected by the outcome. Even today, roughly half the country suspects the acquittal was a miscarriage of justice. Technically, the crime itself remains unsolved all these years later. We never got a final answer in the end.

You could probably add the Karin Grech murder to the list of criminal investigations that were somehow vitiated by political involvement… though I don’t remember the precise details. 

In any case, there is an interesting example going on in Parliament as we speak. It involves the Public Accounts Committee hearings to investigate the oil trading scandal that broke in 2012. 

Again, this is ostensibly an inquiry to establish the truth of what actually happened: this time, with regard to fuel procurement by Enemalta in the years preceding. Not as clear-cut a question to answer, perhaps; but still one which demands a thorough forensic examination of evidence.

Yet in practically all the hearings to date, the investigators seem uniquely interested in other questions, mostly regarding how this issue can be exploited for political ends. And this need hardly surprise us, for both sides of the house – i.e., the ‘investigators’ in this corruption case – are themselves deeply involved in the same scandal. And their respective interests are even more blatant than those of Mediajet. 

The Nationalist Opposition was in government – and thus fully responsible for Enemalta – at the time of the alleged corruption. And these hearings predate the 2013 election… as does the Presidential pardon afforded to oil trader George Farrugia.

From the outset, then, we have the prime suspect in a government corruption scandal – i.e., the government – investigating itself for corruption… and even occupying the twin roles of judge and jury to boot. That it shares these roles with the Labour Opposition hardly balances things out: Labour’s political interest in the affair is just as conspicuous.

And there is no separate criminal procedure of any kind going on, either. There cannot be, because of a Presidential pardon handed down by the same government to begin with.

Kind of neat, isn’t it, how it all works out so nicely in the end. Can anyone be surprised, then, that the thrust of questioning from day one has always been to shift the blame away from one side, and confer it to the other? Like Putin’s (or Obama’s) interest in the plane crash inquiry, their concern is not to establish what really happened… but to see to it that the final answer confirmed by the Committee will conform to their own desired version of events.

Exactly how any of this is supposed to inspire confidence in the Public Accounts Committee, as an adequate venue to investigate a corruption scandal, I have no idea. It’s like that other question, about whether a Presidential Pardon is the ideal way to deal with suspected crimes… when there is all along a police force and the law courts to do just that.

It’s also a little like that thing again, up there in the sky. What the bloody hell is it, anyway? A bird? A plane?

Well, that depends. Which suits your argument better?