Opinion: No mercy, really?

Robert Abela vented his outrage over the embarrassing debacle at the AFM’s Safi Barracks. For the army to let a bunch of amateurs steal 132 kg of cannabis resin from their ‘heavily guarded barracks’ equipped with 35 night vision cameras isn’t funny.

It reveals one shocking reality—the country’s armed forces are an utter joke, an indisciplined motley crew who can’t be trusted with the simplest tasks. Who’s responsible for making the armed forces the country’s laughing stock?

No wonder Robert Abela is livid.  He needs a scapegoat to blame for Labour’s systematic degradation of the armed forces.

“Let me be clear, there will be no mercy for those who fell short,” Abela warned. He’s right. But he’s the one who’s fallen short.

Robert Abela knows why we’ve got to this disastrous stage.  A decade of Labour’s “irregular, illegal, improper and discriminatory” promotions in the AFM led to this.

Labour resorted to “outright illegal” promotions so that Joseph Muscat’s friend Jeffrey Curmi could leap-frog over more experienced and competent colleagues to become AFM commander.

The whole process was carried out behind Brigadier Martin Xuereb’s back. He was commander at the time.

He found out about Labour’s promotions from the Government Gazette. The ombudsman described the whole mess as a “tailor-made process to achieve a pre-ordained result”.

The ombudsman found “injustice and maladministration”, which “ill-behoves the army and the country”.

Over a decade later the country is still paying the price for Labour’s utter disregard for merit, experience and competence.

In September 2013, Jeffrey Curmi was a major. In a few weeks, he received four promotions and, by December, became the new AFM commander.

Mark Mallia benefited from similar promotions and became deputy commander on the same day.

Labour attempted to block the ombudsman from investigating the matter.   Minister Manuel Mallia refused to provide vital documentation to the ombudsman who had to resort to the courts to do his job.

Unsurprisingly the court ruled in the ombudsman’s favour.  Labour still resisted, lodging an appeal.  The Appeals Court confirmed the decision.

The ombudsman found that those promotions were made on “the instructions of the minister”.

The minister did not have the discretion to hand out promotions – “it is not the minister who is the arbiter of the law”. Those promotions to “the favoured few” were “outright illegal”.

They weren’t based on merit or competence.  We all know what they were based on because Ramona Attard, who had no military expertise, sat on the promotions board.

Labour ignored the ombudsman’s report, its conclusions and recommendations, forcing the ombudsman to notify parliament in October 2020.

By then, Robert Abela was prime minister.   But Abela ignored the report and took no action.  That report only became public when it was leaked.

Abela has only himself to blame for the pitiful state in which the army finds itself. Thieves cut through the fence, broke the locks on the container holding the drugs and spent hours coming and going with sackloads of cannabis resin while one soldier slept soundly and the other watched a film with headphones on not to disturb his colleague’s sleep.

This wasn’t a one-off. This wasn’t an exceptional day. A major was on the premises. Those soldiers knew it but still slept, watched a film, cooked a meal, and simply ignored the CCTV cameras they were meant to be watching. They knew nobody got disciplined, and they knew nobody ever checked on them.

The report by Judge Valenzia catalogued the rot in the army. Soldiers were meant to fill in a guard’s report, but frequently, the name of the soldier on guard wasn’t even listed, and the time entered was often wrong. Nobody did anything about it.

Floodlights at the barracks had burnt out ages before but hadn’t been repaired despite repeated reminders.

There’s a reason people climb up the ranks slowly and do not get promoted four times in a few weeks. The time spent in every rank adds experience, competence, and judgment. But Labour wanted Jeffrey Curmi at the helm and Mark Mallia as his deputy – so to hell with due process.

Worse still, those who were more senior, competent and experienced were overlooked.  They were led by the very officers who were their subordinates.

When promotions are based on who you know rather than on what you know, it’s a recipe for disaster. When it happens in the armed forces, it’s catastrophic.

This is the culture that the Labour Party in government created –  you don’t really have to do the job Labour gave you.  Rosianne Cutajar was paid handsomely for nothing.  Amanda Muscat was made a consultant with the Gozo ministry, yet never turned up.

Even Melvin Theuma got a job, which he didn’t want and never did but was still paid for. Labour created the GWU jobless scheme, which recruited thousands of ‘jobless’ workers, most of whom were paid for doing little or nothing.

This is Labour’s culture of rewarding loyalists, party activists, former MPs, canvassers and counting hall agents with fake jobs, directorships in government entities, CEO positions, consultancies, direct orders, and dubious contracts.

So, if they get a six-figure package for doing little, why shouldn’t a low-ranking army officer sleep on duty?  And why is Robert Abela so angry? At least those soldiers turned up for work.

Those soldiers and their major had the audacity to refuse to testify in court.  They didn’t even bother to give a reason.

What is even more galling is that nobody is responsible.  The brigadier is exonerated and the minister is absolved.

Retired judge Geoffrey Valenzia even praised Minister Byron Camilleri for his rectitude (irġulija). And the prime minister demands his pound of flesh from two low-ranking soldiers.

What a farce.