When secrecy is vital

The President’s kitchen garden has been closed for over a year. Nobody knows when it will reopen or whether it will reopen at all. When the press “reached out to the President’s Office on this issue”, no information seems to have been made available.

The last update issued on the OPR official Facebook page was from 1 August 2024, informing the general public that “the Kitchen Garden is closed so that necessary works are carried out. The Public will be informed when it re-opens”.

Why does even the most banal issue have to be turned into a top secret exercise? A Kitchen Garden should not be the subject of speculation in a media article. The absolute secrecy about plans for the Kitchen garden is completely unnecessary.

The “conspiracy theories” reported by LovinMalta about that Kitchen Garden are only circulating because of a total lack of information.

“Others questioned whether any refurbishment work was ever underway, with one local saying they pass by daily and have never seen workmen or vans around”, LovinMalta reported.

That lack of information and the failure of the President’s Office to respond to journalists’ queries about something as mundane as a Kitchen Garden reflects the utter disrespect towards the public and to the press. It is nothing short of abuse of power to withhold basic information from the public you are meant to serve.

The Maltese public has come to expect that level of arrogance. The President’s office is simply following the norm created by a Labour government desperate to conceal everything and anything.

Even the most innocent question from reporters is perceived by the ruling party as an attack and deserves to be met with a robust and determined refusal to answer it, and often a witchhunt of the reporter posing it by Labour’s ONE.

Two recent reports have highlighted the disastrous situation Labour has brought the country to. The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) published a report entitled “Monitoring Freedom of Information in Europe: Denied Access” while the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative published another called “Who controls the Narrative?”

Both are equally damning of the dire situation in Malta under Labour.

Both complain about Labour’s practice of denying freedom of information requests on arbitrary grounds. The MFRR highlighted the plight of Maltese journalists who “are frequently faced by administrative silence when trying to access governmental information”.

“Authorities delayed responses – sometimes for several years – by engulfing journalists in lengthy and expensive legal proceedings”, the report points out.

Labour funds its battle to restrict information to the public using the public’s own money. Journalists and media houses have to fund their own court expenses in their efforts to uncover information that Labour has a duty to publish but won’t.

It took over two years of legal wrangling, costly court fees and a court order for Labour to finally be forced to reveal that Malta Film Commissioner Johann Grech had spent €120,000 of our money to pay David Walliams for hosting one show. Of course Labour didn’t want the public to know how it’s squandering public funds.

Neither did Labour want us to know what members of cabinet were earning or what assets they held. That’s why Robert Abela blocked a Freedom of Information request on cabinet members’ declaration of assets. If people knew that Clayton Bartolo was earning just over €60,000 per year, they would ask awkward questions about how he could possibly spend over €123,000 on his lavish wedding bash.

The MFFR noted how Labour rejected over 30 FOI requests about how much Saviour Balzan was being paid out of taxpayers’ money. Even when the Information and Data Protection Commissioner ordered release of that information, our Labour government and its entities refused, forcing the Shift to go through endless court proceedings and considerable financial strain.

The Shift faced 40 FOI lawsuits brought by Abela’s government entities in an attempt to conceal where Labour was squandering our taxes. Despite losing all these cases, the government still refused to reveal how much money it’s paying Saviour Balzan.

No wonder the MFRR reported on “a troubling culture of secrecy and resistance by Maltese authorities towards journalists and independent media”.

Malta is ranked 83^rd out of 140 countries with regards to freedom of information. The 2024 Media Pluralism Monitor categorised the right to information in Malta as being at “high risk”, citing slow reforms, chronic delays and “a general tendency of the government to sideline and ignore critical media”.

That’s putting it kindly. Labour doesn’t ignore critical media – it harasses, persecutes and demonises them.

For a government that listens, Robert Abela has been pretty deaf to all the appeals and requests from international organisations to change his ways. It’s been two years since the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner sent Robert Abela an open letter voicing her concerns about freedom of expression reforms, “including continuing instances of denial of access to information which implies a pattern of unwarranted secrecy within state institutions regarding information”. Abela simply ignored the Human Rights Commissioner.

The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative urged Abela to repeal laws that allow him to stall Freedom of information requests with frivolous appeals. It urged Abela to adopt the recommendations made by his own Data Protection Commissioner. Their report called on our Labour government to finally adopt the recommendations of the Caruana Galizia inquiry which still lie gathering dust more than four years after their publication. But Freedom of information isn’t Planning.

It’s remarkable how deft Abela is at ramming through legislation to aid and abet developers and how slothful he can be at protecting the public’s right to know what he’s up to.

Even worse he’s pretty slick at harassing the independent media. In 2023 Malta had the highest number of SLAPP cases per capita in the European Union – most of those came from Abela’s Labour government. Labour refused to join the Media Freedom Coalition, whose members are committed to promote media freedom. You don’t have to wonder why.

There is one other piece of legislation Abela has failed to revoke – sedition. That’s a handy piece of legislation to keep in his anti-media armamentarium.  In Malta, anybody attempting to overthrow the government faces a four year jail-term.