Crisis, what crisis?

By the time this is up, we might have a shiny new Chief Justice.  Or we might not.  Whatever, as I said before, this isn’t really a pool I’d be best advised to piddle into, and I’d sure not like it to be suggested that I have the ear of the Leader of the Opposition.

I mean, according to the PM, the dear chap has been taking advice from everyone and anyone, generally hide-bound reactionaries whose only interest is to spread hatred and odium against Labourites.

Or something like that: suffice it to say that I haven’t ever met Alex Borg and I certainly haven’t bent his ear about who should get the nod to be C-J.   I just hope that (s)he is fit and proper, that’s all.

This doesn’t mean that I can’t have some fun with Abela and his dramatic speeches.

You know the ones I mean, it’s when the Crown Prince gets to his hind legs, generally in a “Labour Fortress”, and tells us that because Parliament didn’t immediately rubber‑stamp his preferred choice of Chief Justice, there was the clear and present danger that we would all wake up the next morning in some dystopian, courthouse‑free wasteland where judicial decisions were somehow “contaminated”.

It was, we were assured, the brink of a constitutional crisis, capital letters implied, klaxons blaring, the sky falling in on us and all of that good stuff.  According to Abela, absent his motion, Malta’s legal system would have teetered into paralysis, judges and magistrates would be struck dumb (there’s a thought), and your overdue parking ticket might morph into a matter for The Hague.

There’s the awkward detail that spoilt his perfectly good panic, however: the Constitution already caters for the situation.

Quite explicitly, in fact, whatever the Honourable Speaker, who last time I looked hadn’t been given plenipotentiary judicial powers (that’s the beauty of the separation of powers) says.

Read my lips: the law must be read to ensure stability.  Consequently, if there isn’t a two-thirds majority, the outgoing Chief Justice remains in office until there is, however convenient it may be for the PM to say otherwise.

And if that isn’t clear enough, there is also a provision for an acting Chief Justice to be lumbered with the job of trying to get the cats to walk in a parade, also known as trying to create some sort of order within the judiciary, if the incumbent gets hit by Elon Musk’s crashing rocket and can’t do the job.

In other words, even if Parliament decided to go on a prolonged sulk, Malta would not suddenly be left without someone minding the judicial shop, leaving aside that it wouldn’t actually have been the end of the world anyway.

This wasn’t a constitutional cataclysm looming, it was a minor procedural inconvenience, dressed up as a national emergency because Robert Abela needed to make snide remarks in the general direction of the guy who is sneaking up on him and threatening to make the next elections not such a foregone conclusion.

Enter stage left Anġlu Farrugia, serenely confident and untroubled by textual nuance, insisting that unless Parliament acted that very day, the sky would fall. The Speaker’s interpretation, delivered with all the calm authority of a man who has never once doubted himself in public, only amplified the sense of manufactured urgency. The Constitution, apparently, could wait.

And this is where a little historical memory might have helped.

Because Malta has experienced a genuine constitutional crisis, one that didn’t require theatrical hypotheticals or breathless press conferences.

Decades ago, when Robert Abela was not much more than a gleam in his pop’s eye and Anġlu Farrugia much, much younger, under Dom Mintoff, the Constitutional Court was actually suspended.

Not metaphorically. Not rhetorically. Actually suspended. As in: no constitutional review, no judicial backstop, no polite assurances that “everything is fine, really”.

That was a crisis. That was the executive muscle being flexed against constitutional safeguards. Compared to that, Abela’s hand‑wringing over a delayed confirmation vote is like confusing a paper cut with open‑heart surgery.

No doubt historians with undying fealty to the truth (Prof. Simon Mercieca need not apply) will some day regale with the real story, without Dominican (Fenech) nuancing, but for the moment, here we are, treated to emergency motions, presidential interventions, and speeches that sounded like they’d been storyboarded by someone binge‑watching disaster films.

Lighten up, guys, the sky wasn’t, actually, about to fall in.