Abela’s politics of intimidation mirrors Trump

When Timothy O’Brien claimed in his book ‘TrumpNation’ that Donald Trump had falsely inflated his net worth from $250 million to $6 billion, Trump sued him for over $2 billion.  And lost.  But the case dragged on for five years before it was dismissed, leaving O’Brien exhausted and with a massive legal bill.

In an interview, Trump later admitted he knew he couldn’t win the suit but brought it anyway. “I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more.  I did it to make his life miserable, which I’m happy about,” Trump told the Washington Post.

Trump is now threatening to sue the BBC for $1 billion over how the broadcaster edited one of his speeches.

Prime Minister Robert Abela has taken a leaf out of Trump’s playbook, threatening to sue NET News for reporting that Abela’s controversial planning bills were facing internal opposition within the Labour Party.

NET claimed that Abela had met his parliamentary group and, despite resistance,  informed them that he was still intent on pushing ahead with his controversial reforms.  Nothing earth-shattering in NET’s reporting.  We know precisely what Abela’s intentions are – to please his developer friends and get those reforms through. So why was he threatening to sue NET News?

Maybe, like Trump, he just wants to make the lives of his adversaries and critics miserable.

Abela had been feeling the intense pressure building around his proposed planning reforms.  Even Labour stalwart and Mintoff loyalist Sammy Meilaq had vociferously criticised Abela’s planning reforms and endorsed the protest organised by Graffitti.

Labour Party President Alex Sciberras had also urged Robert Abela to revise his planning reform plans. Labour’s president even expressed his concern about Abela’s tactic of riding roughshod over the whole population and failing to consult anybody at all.

Moviment Graffitti’s protest was huge, and hugely embarrassing for Abela. So the minute NET news commented about Abela’s hard-headedness over his planning reforms, he fetched for his cudgel. He threatened NET with “legal action” over their “false report”, “this lie published by the Nationalist media”.

That’s another SLAPP to add to his collection.  He must be pretty proud of his record. That’s one thing Malta is truly best in Europe for – firing SLAPPs at anybody who dares uncover the truth.  Malta was crowned “SLAPP country of the Year” for its record-breaking number of abusive, deterring lawsuits.

The Coalition Against SLAPPS in Europe (CASE) awarded Malta that honour in 2024 thanks to the prolific Abela.  Malta beat stiff competition from Poland, Slovenia and Croatia – but they were no match for Robert Abela.  Malta’s SLAPP score reached 19.93 per capita, eclipsing Slovenia, the second-placed country, which only managed a meagre 2.02 SLAPPs per capita.

That impressive record is all thanks to Abela.  His administration challenged 40 Information and Data Protection Commissioner’s rulings that had gone in The Shift’s favour, forcing proceedings lasting years up to the Court of Appeal to deny information the public had the right to know.

The Shift won case after case in court.  Abela knew he had no chance of winning any of those cases, but instead of withdrawing the rest of the cases, he dug his heels in, costing the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of euro.  His objective was to overwhelm The Shift.

He knew that fighting that many cases in court would consume The Shift’s energy, time, and limited financial resources.  And that’s the point of SLAPPs – to silence and intimidate critics by burdening them with the high cost and stress of having to mount a legal defence. They’re intended to badger critics into silence and, more importantly, to discourage others from speaking out or mounting any opposition.

One in every 10 SLAPPs filed in Europe in recent years targeted Maltese journalists. And that’s how Abela wants it to stay.

Ironically, Abela bragged that Malta was the first EU country to transpose EU anti-SLAPP legislation into domestic law.  What he didn’t brag about was that he only included cross-border claims and not domestic ones in his legal notice.  That means that Abela can keep lodging his vexatious lawsuits.  Abela ensured that he can continue to harass and intimidate journalists, political adversaries and anybody else who embarrasses him with the truth.

Human rights organisations and other NGOs expressed their disappointment at Abela’s cynical move: “We are disappointed that the government has chosen to limit the anti-SLAPP legislation to those minimum requirements, covering only SLAPP cases with cross-border implications”.

“We look forward to your positive confirmation that the promised and much delayed White paper on reforms will include proposals for…both cross-border and domestic cases”, those organisations told the prime minister in August 2024.

Not only did Abela ignore their pleas, but he kept using the SLAPP weapon to beat up his critics. He’s still threatening media houses that he’ll drag them to court over their “false” reporting, casting a “chilling effect” on an already self-censoring media environment.

His very own former party president and current MP, Ramona Attard, appealed for the criminalisation of libel.  And Labour’s deputy leader, Ian Borg, is busy grovelling to Trump – the man who’s threatened to “open up” libel laws – exactly what Attard called for.

“I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they (journalists) write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money… You see, with me, they’re not protected,” Trump said.

Abela is following in Trump’s footsteps. With Abela, they’re not protected either. He robustly refuses to implement any of the Caruana Galizia inquiry recommendations to protect journalists; he failed to introduce anti-SLAPP legislation for domestic cases; he’s taken Malta to the top of the SLAPP leader board; he’s publicly attacked journalists, calling them part of the establishment, he’s hammered them with SLAPPs, and he’s even threatened to drag them to court.

No wonder Malta is one of the worst-ranked European countries on the World Press Freedom Index.