Politics of the two-fingered salute

Chris Fearne is presumed innocent and, unlike many who suddenly discover a passionate attachment to due process only when one of their own is in the firing line, I actually believe in the presumption of innocence.

Moreover, the signs are that there may well have been something of a gang-up. Some of the people who, conventionally speaking, should have been standing behind him seem instead to have been sharpening the knives. Whether that amounts to anything is for others to decide.

So, stripped of the politics, I cannot honestly say that Robert Abela is necessarily wrong to appoint Fearne to represent Malta abroad. Fearne, on the narrow and pettifogging ground that he’s innocent until proven guilty, can be exalted to the Cabinet.

But seriously: are these really the depths we have reached?

The Prime Minister appoints a man to high office of state while another arm of his own State is simultaneously saying that there is sufficient evidence to charge that same man before the Criminal Court.

And we are supposed to pretend that there is nothing remotely odd about this.

Apparently, in modern Malta, one part of the government can tell us that a man is fit to represent the country overseas, while another part tells us that he is fit to stand in the dock.

One assumes they don’t have coffee together.

At the same time, the Hon. Glenn Bedingfield, formerly entrusted with garbage, now finds himself entrusted by Abela with the police, the armed forces, the prisons and the rest of the security apparatus.

This is notwithstanding the fact that no fewer than three judges found him responsible for operating a despicable blog that formed part of the wider Labour campaign of vilification against journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

To be clear, nobody is suggesting that Bedingfield was involved in the murder plot. Nobody is suggesting that he pressed the button.

But there is a reason why civilised societies recognise that those who create an atmosphere of hatred and dehumanisation are not entirely detached from its consequences.

He was part of the apparatus, an essential cog in the works.  He operated, directly and also within the larger effort, to silence, by intimidation, threat and insult, any journalist or commentator who dares gainsay Labour and all its works.

He, along with his cohorts, turned Caruana Galizia into fair game, and the process continues to this day.  He was not, and is not, innocent until proven guilty; he is guilty of vileness and viciousness.

Apparently, this is no impediment to his becoming the minister responsible for internal security.

This is the same frame of mind that led to Rosianne Cutajar being rehabilitated. The same attitude that kept Carmelo Abela afloat.

The mindset that says: ‘The bastards on the other side don’t like them, therefore we will reward them.  We will vote for them, and we will make them powerful.’

Clearly, that they embody the standards that ought to accompany public office is a given, in the sense that it is axiomatic that they don’t.

But voting for them and appointing them are gestures. A sneer. A deliberate two-fingered salute directed at critics.

The message is simple.  The point is no longer whether something is right. The point is whether it sends the desired political signal.

And that signal is that standards are for other people.