Opinion: Labour’s great strides

Robert Abela made another of his comical claims – “Labour made great strides on press freedom”.  Maybe he has a point, except it’s great strides backwards that Labour made.

In 2013, after 25 years of PN administration, Malta ranked 45th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index. By 2023, it had plummeted to 84th.

Labour’s great strides started briskly in 2013 – Malta fell to 51st in just one year. By 2018, it reached a disgraceful 65th place.

By 2019, it was 77th, 81st in 2020 and 84th in 2023. That was Malta’s worst-ever ranking, with a score of just 59.76.  This year, Malta’s global score practically stayed the same at 60.96.

Robert Abela is right.  Labour made great strides – towards extinguishing media freedom. Malta is tied with the Central African Republic, Guyana, and Kosovo, all of which have a global score of 60.

Does anybody remember Labour’s empty promise that it would make Malta the best in Europe? Instead, it sank Malta’s press freedom to the level of the Central African Republic.  That’s a catastrophic fall Labour engineered.

Abela believes that if he repeats the same lie often enough, everybody will swallow it.  That might be the case for the ever-dwindling number of purveyors of Labour’s ONE news, but not for most others.

Abela flew into a rage in parliament because the respected Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Malta so low, rubbishing his silly boasts about great strides.  Abela launched into a vicious tirade against RSF and their World Press Freedom Index.

“In the end,” Abela claimed,” like any report of its kind, (the Press Freedom Index) represents the point of view and reflects the motivation and perspective of those who wrote it”.  Except, it doesn’t.

The report is based on the replies to detailed questionnaires sent to media experts, journalists, lawyers and other key stakeholders.  It doesn’t reflect the views or the motivation of the authors. It reports its findings.

Abela attempted to discredit RSF.  He accused the international organisation of making misleading claims. He called them agenda-driven and fed by “those who think the government does nothing good in this country”.

At least he didn’t label them part of the establishment or an extreme faction of the opposition.

Why is Abela so furious that Malta’s ranking plummeted to Guyana’s level?  He knows exactly why.  He’s the one who accused journalists of being part of the establishment during a press conference.

He accused the editor of the Times of Malta of conspiring with the opposition “at Costa Coffee”. His own party station relentlessly harasses and persecutes journalists for doing their job.

Government ministries and entities have doggedly refused to provide information even when the Freedom of Information Appeals tribunal ordered the information released.

Abela’s ministries and public entities took multiple cases before the appeals court, knowing they would lose, purely out of spite and with the explicit intention of financially crippling The Shift, which relentlessly exposes Labour’s abuse.

It’s been over three years since the Daphne Caruana Galizia inquiry report was published. After first pledging to implement its recommendations, Abela steadfastly refuses to implement any of them.

Instead, he’s publicly attacked the members of that inquiry board in an attempt to discredit them and their work.

Just three days after Abela’s vicious attack on RSF and their World Press Freedom Index, his deputy, Ian Borg stood up at an OSCE side event and stated that “the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia is a stark reminder of the urgent need to strengthen the fourth pillar of democracy”.

Borg was part of the government, which the Caruana Galizia inquiry lambasted for creating an atmosphere of impunity leading to the collapse of the rule of law that emboldened those who wanted her dead to execute their plan.  Borg has also been part of Abela’s government.  He’s now deputy prime minister.

Abela and Borg have the power to implement those recommendations.  They could easily have made the changes to ensure journalists were protected so they could work freely and safely and that information of public interest was readily available.

Neither Borg nor Abela have lifted a finger to improve the situation.  They both contributed to Malta’s spiralling deterioration in press freedom.

Ian Borg is the epitome of hypocrisy.  “My country knows all too well the threats to media freedom,” he told the international delegates at the OSCE meeting held in Malta last week.  Of course, he does – because it’s his party leaders, his fellow MPs like Glenn Bedingfield, and his party behind those threats to the media.

“The space for free and independent media is shrinking, and so is access to public interest information,” Borg declared.

How can these people show their face in public? Borg turned down a Freedom of Information request to publish details of the hundreds of thousands of public funds funnelled into Gozo Channel.

His ministry and entities falling under his ministry rejected Freedom of Information requests on payments made to Malta Today’s Saviour Balzan for PR. Even when the court ordered his government to publish the documents, his ministry still refused, openly defying the rule of law.

Labour runs the government like a secret organisation while its deputy prime minister pretends to mourn the shrinking access to public interest information. Abela hasn’t even tabled his or his ministers’ declaration of assets, which he should have done by March.

No wonder Reporters without Borders called out Robert Abela: “The prime minister’s remarks in parliament were indicative of his administration’s continued lack of political will to implement meaningful reforms to improve Malta’s press freedom record”.

The organisation accused Abela of attempting to deflect criticism instead of addressing “very serious issues”. They pointed out that Abela was attempting to “establish a misleading counter-narrative”.

Reporters Without Borders dealt Abela a deserved humiliating rebuke: “Until the Maltese government begins to take its international obligations seriously… the public’s right to information will continue to be impacted”. They’re right.

Labour hasn’t even started taking its obligations seriously.  It’s too busy destroying the independent media, concealing the truth and trying to save itself.