Can full justice ever be achieved?

Justice, revenge, comeuppance. A feeling of total gratitude that patience is, after all, a glorious virtue which earns its reward. This is our life right now as it unfolds in its macabre, horrifying, slow-motion pace.

Justice delayed, it is said, is justice denied. Undoubtedly, we can expect more action, more arrests, more arraignments, more political backlashes. More resignations.

In this world of ours, this microcosm of a state, we had taken gigantic steps over long decades to rebuild a country worthy of being an EU member.

Then in a few years it was all ruined by greed, impunity and horrendous hijacking of all institutions.

We need to go back in time to see things in their right perspective. After the ravages of Dom Mintoff’s Labour Party, Malta had to undergo a thorough reconstruction. Not just of its international reputation, but more fundamentally of its internal structures, infrastructure and institutions.

Today we talk of the hardship and horrors of Labour under Joseph Muscat, which are being carried on by Robert Abela. But these are, to a huge extent, just a déjà vu part of the life of those of us who lived through the 1970s and a big part of the 1980s.

Then, democracy had been curtailed. The courts were used as a government rubber stamp; violence was institutionalised; public broadcasting was worse than party propaganda; gerrymandering was rampant and corruption by thugs and ministers was part of our life. Our foreign policy was closely aligned to North Korea, the USSR and Muammar Ghaddafi’s Libya. The more pariah the state was, the closer our ties to them.

That is what was facing the PN when they were voted into power in 1987.

They managed to rebuild, reinvent, reenergise.

They proved that it is not totally impossible to rebuild a state which is in tatters.

Back to the present: a scary scenario that is a living nightmare. The dream of rebuilding a shattered country seems insurmountable right now. The Labour Party is in power and seems unbeatable in electoral terms. The PN under Adrian Delia is just a joke. Is there another political force that could triumph and do what the PN did over 30 years ago?

Or will a new PN leader manage a change in fortune? Would he and the PN achieve the same transformation as happened way back in 1987?

Only a crystal ball could answer these impossible questions.

Inherent to the miracle the PN managed over 30 years ago is a person who had the vision, the patience and the organisational prowess to galvanise the population into believing in themselves once more and in achieving change. That was Eddie Fenech Adami.

Putting aside his achievements and political savviness, Fenech Adami always used a slogan – even at the worst of Labour times – which instilled strength and faith in his colleagues and followers. It also led his detractors to see in him a man who could energise people by having faith in him, his vision and his ways.

Fenech Adami never tired of declaring: Is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur (justice will prevail).

This was his constant battle cry, reiterated throughout the dark hours that had fallen on this country riven by political violence and hatred.

A country where it was illegal to use the word Malta, national or nażżjon (nation) unless this was deemed acceptable by the state. A country with a police corps led by someone who ended up in jail for murder; a country where the head of the army led thugs to stop the PN from having a legally sanctioned mass meeting in Żejtun. It was a country where rule of law was anything but sacrosanct. Where Labour thugs, instigated by Labour party leaders, set fire to The Times of Malta building and attacked and terrified the family of the Leader of Opposition in their own home.

Somehow the day was saved for a better country, a better future, a proper place in the EU and in world politics.

From all this the biggest lesson to take and live by is the slogan, Is-sewwa jirbaħ żgur.

Today times are tough. Times are dark.

The country is scarily close to the brink. Some justice is being meted out. It is, slowly, being seen to be done. Late in the day, terribly late and with too many causalities on the way.

If justice had been done before, if is-sewwa (justice) had really triumphed when it should have, Daphne Caruana Galizia would be alive and smiling, seeing all this unravel. Seeing Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna, being dealt their deserved punishment, and seeing the perpetrators, or some of them, face justice and possible jail.

It was Daphne who exposed all the criminality and the utter impunity of the perpetrators. Yet she is not here.

The only thing I used to think Daphne got wrong was when she had claimed that she disagreed with Eddie Fenech Adami’s mantra. She did not believe that justice always prevails.

I always believed it does. I believe it will. I believe, in the very long term, we will see justice triumph and Malta’s institutions regaining their strength and independence.

But I now agree with Daphne even on this. Because whatever will happen, whatever will be salvaged and rebuilt, full justice is never possible.

What use is justice regained if Daphne, a lone pen in the utter wilderness of Malta, can never be here with us to rejoice, to feel the elation of knowing that the crooks are now desperately scrambling to stop justice reaching them?

Full justice is not possible but some justice will come, one day, one glorious day.