Wylie Cunningham offers a few more personal insights into Malta’s problems

Malta’s Lord Chief Justice said something the other day that took even cynical old me totally aback. ‘is’honor came up with the theory (or was it an excuse?) that the derisory fines and suspended sentences handed out in the recent VAT scam trials were justified because the guilty parties also suffered the penalty and, presumably, the ignominy of being barred from holding public office in the foreseeable future. What is this man on, and where can I lay my hands on a pint or so of it. Apparently, ‘is’onor doesn’t understand the island he presides over too well. For your information, M’Lud, the type of people who indulge in Vat frauds of this magnitude do not stand for public office. They simply buy the people who do!

And, this being Malta, the purchasees come pretty damn’ cheap.

These islands are fond - far too fond, in my opinion - of rabbiting on, and on, and on about Malta’s great traditions and history. One tradition far too few people ever mention is that, in common with almost all of the Mediterranean littoral, corruption is rife in Malta. In fact, corruption is so rife here that it is not simply endemic in proportion - but epidemic.

In fact, our esteemed government missed a major trick in its recent budget. What they should have done was to have declared corruption as a legitimate policy, and applied a levy of, say, 10-15% on all transactions. With that simple action, the government could have raised enough money to lower all taxes, raise social spending to unprecedented levels, cover the forecast increases in the utility bills, and have enough left in the public kitty to build some decent roads.

Another, admittedly longer-term, benefit of making corruption official government policies would be to consign the practice ultimately to the scrap heap. After all, isn’t that where all the gonzipinheads’ recent policies have ended up?

Of course, mention corruption nowadays and people’s thinking turns immediately to matters like cheating on legitimate taxes and the giving or taking of bribes and favours. But corruption takes many forms. The first mean of the word set out in the OED is “the destruction or spoiling of anything esp by disintegration, or decomposition (or) putrefaction.”

Disintegration, decomposition, putrefaction are strong words, but are there many better ways to describe what has been happening to so many elements of Maltese society, what might be termed “the Maltese establishment” over the past few years under the government of this current administration. The Lord Chief Justice is a senior law officer, so let’s take the Law as our first example……

It was announced at the weekend that Stephen Marsden will be suing Malta for fundamental breaches of his human rights. Remember Stephen Marsden?? He is the Englishman who has just spent more than three years banged up in Malta charged, and found guilty, of a crime which did not actually exist here (or anywhere else that matters) at the time of his arrest. Back in July 2006 Mr Marsden was arrested by Malta’s finest boys in (varying shades of) blue. Presumably on the basis that PC Plod here can’t tell the difference between a classified drug and a jujube, they charged him with possessing and planning to sell the drug MDMA better known as ecstasy.




Malta’s only problem with this display of the majesty of the law was that what Mr Marsden had in his possession was NOT ecstasy but MCCP, a drug which was not then illegal, or controlled or scheduled. This fact was pointed out by no less an authority than the court’s own appointed expert pharmacologist. In any civilised country what would have happened at that point would have been profuse apologies all round, discreet offers of compensation, a lot of police red faces and lots of police arses to match where official boots had been firmly applied as a reminder next time to find out what they are talking about before charging people with serious crimes.

What actually happened here in perfect, religious Malta was that Mr Marsden was returned to prison to give the powers-that-be time to consider how to change the law to spare Melitan blushes. Eventually, in February 2007, Mr Marsden was re-arraigned on a charge which amounted to the prosecution saying: “OK, we admit that the pills he had were not actually ecstasy, but they might have been and everybody thought they were. It’s an easy mistake to make.” Even that charge, at that time, was a load of bullshit. Mr Marsden was indicted in February 2007; it wasn’t until three months later, in May, that Malta finally got round to changing the law and scheduling MCCP.

Truly, as Charles Dickens’s Bumble the Beadle said: “…the law is an ass - an idiot.”

And, talking of bumbling idiotic law, can anybody remind me of just how many members of Malta’s Plods have been accused, on good evidence, of assaulting members of the public they are hired to protect over the past two years? Equally, does anyone have the slightest idea what has happened about any of them ….. any suspensions, any enquiries, any disciplinary hearings, any disciplinary action, any demotions? Anything at all?

Little wonder that the Maltese police’s official motto, translated from the (bad) Latin used for it, can be rendered into the vernacular as “Oh God help us.”

Mention of Beadle the Bumble means I simply cannot resist the temptation to comment to the storm in a teacup that is the University’s decision to ban a student magazine because it contains a “durty” short story, “durty” because the mere dirty just doesn’t the whole thing justice. I have not read the article in question, nor do I intend to, so my comments will be brief. First, if those who took this decision are so bloody pure and high-minded, how did they know what all these words mean? Obscenity, like beauty and corruption, lies in the mind of the beholder

Secondly, and finally, student publications are meant to be provocative, irritating, immature and low life. Universities are there, not simply to instil learning but also to create the finest of young minds into well-rounded citizens of the world. They are also there to give these fine young minds a last opportunity of gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum summus before the demands of society turn them all into boring old farts like … well, like University Beadles, Rectors and, dare I suggest, Lord Chief Justices.