Robert Abela’s assault on truth, justice

It took 10 seconds for Prime Minister Robert Abela to expose who he really is, what his priorities are, and his real intentions.

And it was not a slip of the tongue; nor had he been simply carried away by the supporters who were standing up to applaud him while he was addressing the Labour Party’s general conference last Sunday. He wanted to say it, loud and clear, and he said it.

“Have fun with your blogs and books you entertain yourselves with… we will reply by creating more employment, investment and wealth.”

That sentence may seem innocuous, but given the context, and the contemptuous tone in which it was delivered, it is highly dangerous, especially as it comes from the head of government.

That sentence encapsulates what Robert Abela stands for. He is not interested in the truth. He is not interested in justice. He is not interested in the rule of law. He is not interested in righteousness. He is not interested to see that what really happened and what is really happening comes to light.

All he is interested in is to blind us with what he describes as generating prosperity, but we all know that means crumbs for the people, and affluence for those close to the top. We all know it means that some will continue to pig out while the rest of us struggle to make ends meet.

That, then, the sentence that followed in last Sunday’s speech was a reference to next year’s elections for the European Parliament and local councils makes it clear that Labour’s goals are to hold on to power, and it will attempt to do so by hiding or trying to hide indisputable facts while window dressing and keeping the people happy in panem et circenses mode.

Those 10 seconds were an assault on truth and justice. They were an insult to education too, in the wide sense of the word – the teachers who every day painstakingly try to encourage their students to widen their knowledge by reading books; and the parents who would like their children to spend more time educating themselves instead of just playing computer games.

Those 10 seconds occurred a day after the publication of a book by Repubblika president Robert Aquilina, in which it was revealed that magisterial recommendations had been ignored by the Attorney General and the police.

Those 10 seconds also came a few days after the publication, by Mark Camilleri, of Whatsapp exchanges between a Labour MP, Rosianne Cutajar, and Yorgen Fenech, who is accused of being a mastermind in the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

What the Prime Minister said was a direct attack on Aquilina and Camilleri, and their revelations. It was also an attack on all journalists, writers, researchers and the media as a whole.

In those 10 seconds, the Prime Minister discarded their work, belittled their investigations and threw down the drain their quest for information – the kind of information that the government, and Abela, wants to keep a lid on.

We’re not talking about fiction, nor entertainment. We’re talking about hard facts. And history has given us many examples of what follows when there is an evident attempt by those who hold power to suppress all the criticism that comes their way.

Abela is afraid of the truth, just as much as he is afraid of the details that could emerge from a public inquiry into the death of Jean Paul Sofia on a construction site last December. His refusal to order a public inquiry can only mean that there are details which could be embarrassing.

Labour is doing its best to push forward the idea that a magisterial inquiry is the same as a public inquiry. We even had the Justice Minister, Jonathan Attard, feeding this narrative this week, when he told The Malta Independent that a public inquiry will not “reveal anything different” from the magisterial inquiry. He is wrong, and a man in his position should know the difference. If he does, then he was intentionally misleading. If he does not, he should not be where he is.

Labour wants us to believe that a magisterial inquiry and a public inquiry have the same outcome. If they did, then, why was a public inquiry ordered into Daphne’s assassination?

This takes us back to those 10 seconds – because Abela does not want people to read books and blogs that could open their horizons and, most of all, uncover information that Abela wants to keep hidden.

Abela does not want the people to know what he and Labour are hiding. He just wants them to listen to his gospel.

Only authoritarians speak the way Abela did.