What are you saying, Michael?

Look, the PL is on his mind

“National security, even personal security, is under threat … there have been recurring and worrying cases concerning liberties and democratic rights.” Mubarak’s Egypt? Parisian suburbs run by radicalized muslims? Rioting London? Nope. This is how Michael Falzon, Labour’s shadow minister for justice and the interior, sees Malta at present.

Let us put aside the OTT rhetoric, that Falzon’s promiscuity with words leads him to describe European Malta as if it were Mintoff’s in the 1980s. What is on this potential minister's mind?

Falzon let’s off on a number of matters, and I am listing them all on purpose: the Cyrus Engerer saga, prison remissions, jury trial delays, policing in Paceville, the alleged hacking of MPs emails, JPO’s and Evarist Bartolo’s allegation that their phones were tapped, the mistake made by the police sexual abuse at St Joseph Home case, an arrested person’s right to a lawyer during investigations. It is an overwhelming smorgasbord of issues which at first glance reduces you to an awe-stricken silence. But when you take a closer look, the picture changes completely. 

Falzon’s menu of issues has three sections. There are those which are allegations and serious ones at that. So does the potential minister say anything about them? Does he tell us clearly where he stands, whether emails were hacked or phones tapped? No. He just rehearses the typically local nudge, nudge, wink, wink stuff.

Then there is the case of a genuine human error. For obvious reasons, I am much more pissed off with the police than Michael Falzon is about the mistake they made in the St Joseph Home case. Had they not made it, Godwin Scerri would have got a decade in prison for raping one of the young teenagers. But I have no doubt that it was a genuine police oversight. Falzon, on the other hand, seems to suggest with him as minister such a thing would never happen, that a Labour government will be the first one in human history whose departments never err.

And finally there is the third and most crucial set of issues – policy ones. These are absolutely fundamental because Michael Falzon did not give a press conference in the mid-August heat to a gaggle of sweating journalists just for the hell of it. His words are those of an opposition politician, an invitation: make me the minister and I will solve these problems. Therefore, his job was to tell us how he will.

Given the key importance of policy issues, it pays to list again the four he mentions: prison remissions, policing in Paceville, jury trial delays and the administration an arrested person’s right to a lawyer during investigations. Does Michael Falzon, tell us what he will do about these four issues if he becomes minister of this patch of government? Did the shadow minister launch policies in each area to show how they are better than existing ones? Again, the answer is a flat no. Complete and utter silence.

So the tally sheet of Michael Falzon’s press conference is as follows. He repeats serious allegations without taking a stand on them, criticizes genuine human error when he knows it will always be with us and lambasts a government without telling us what he will do if he becomes part of one. 

Why did I even bother to get into this when Marsalforn bay beckons from behind my laptop screen?