We are writing before yesterday evening's parliamentary sitting, so what we say may be overtaken by events.
There has been a sudden spurt in favour of convening the Constitutional Convention and changing the Constitution. Both the Leader of the Opposition, who spoke first, and the Prime Minister who spoke some minutes later touched on the subject and both urged urgency.
We fail to see the reason for such urgency, even though it has long been clear the Constitution needs to be revamped.
What makes this sudden move all the more suspect is that somehow this suggestion is being slipped in as a somehow necessary step in the wake of the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia and her insistence on the rule of law.
In our opinion, what is absolutely necessary is to find the killer/s of the journalist as quickly and as conclusively as possible. Our country cannot remain hanging in doubt and uncertainty while the killers roam around. Finding the killer is the first and prime duty of all Maltese especially those in power and those involved in the investigations.
Having found the killer, the investigation must then move on to identify who was behind the bomb, who decided upon it, who authorized it, who financed it, etc. Only when all these questions are satisfactorily answered will we have a complete picture of what that bomb aimed at.
We have heard arguments in the past days that some could not understand how suddenly the outrage at Daphne's murder was morphed into a demand of the sacking of the Commissioner of Police and of the Attorney General, even considering that the two, the first especially, do not inspire trust and respect. When we have had four Commissioners in just four years, what guarantee do we have the fifth will be better.
Nor is the addendum to the above any more convincing: ensuring that persons like the Commissioner must be approved by two-thirds of Parliament is no guarantee of a serious and hard-working Commissioner. There are other people who have been appointed by the entire House and while they are diligent, they cannot be described as the best persons in the role.
But this sudden Damascene conversion to a Constitutional Convention takes the biscuit. All of a sudden, when we are in the throes of such a crisis, when our name is being bandied and besmirched around the world, we are now to try and focus on fiddling with our Constitution. And from what we can gather, this is being prepared as something concocted and agreed upon by the two parties in Parliament. The legal experts who have been saying for years we need to change the Constitution seem to be out of the picture. So too the other parties, whether those (Partit Demokratiku) who are in Parliament and those who are not in Parliament (Alternattiva Demokratika and others).
The country is still suffering from this extreme form of bipartisanship – the huge imbalance which impedes parties from being represented in Parliament is one example, so too the media empires the two parties have been allowed to have.
There is yet another reason which has surfaced in the past hours – a bid to make Malta resemble Erdogan's Turkey with an increased power in the hands of the prime minister. We await clarifications in this regard, keeping in mind the extremely feeble situation of the Leader of the Opposition, a man without political background, and weak inside his own party, who may be tempted to accept any offer by the astute prime minister.
Oh Daphne, why did you have to die so quickly? Who knows what you would have said of such a proposal?
from The Malta Independent http://ift.tt/2ii9Ex6
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment