Why Labour will re-introduce criminal libel

Criminal libel was abolished in Malta in 2018 after the botched press act was re-drafted by Andrew Sciberras, Ingram Bondin and myself. Today, Robert Abela wants to re-introduce it this time round with even harsher penalties, fines and a prison term. The Labour Party does not have an electoral mandate to do this. And even if they would get an electoral mandate for the re-introduction of criminal libel, it would be unconstitutional and go against the core tenets of free speech.

Labour is successfully passing this law covertly without discussing it in public because its intent is nefarious. They didn’t bang their drums about it as they do with all the other insignificant or corrupt things they do. They are trying to muzzle their critics by an authoritarian law by stealth and they are desperate to introduce it.

Robert Abela’s history in politics is exclusively and purely that of a rent-seeker: he was never a political activist. He is in politics out of vanity and purely for personal interest and has no political ideals guiding him in what should be a public service. He is also dumb and infantile and that makes his adversarial-political mentally imbued with a sense of evil and spite. He is a tin-pot dictator. Abela doesn’t know how to do politics: he only plays games. This is why he lies his way out on questions about rule of law and Daphne’s murder. He isn’t genuinely interested to address the multiple crises our country faces. He just sits there and lies and plays theatre.

So, Abela has purged his party of contrasting voices, turned the public broadcaster into his own personal propaganda service, and is using millions of Euros in public money to fund his own propaganda and fake media outlets which are nothing more but propaganda outlets of the Labour Party.

One of the only weapons that we critics and opposing political adversaries of the government have when facing a corrupt government pumping millions of Euros in propaganda is the sharp tool of insult and offence: now they want to take it away from us.

When Maltese government representatives travel abroad and tell you that the Maltese government is working to re-establish rule of law and to ensure that justice is served, know very well that they are lying. We are in the process of turning into a populist dictatorship where our country is run by a corrupt family supported by a criminal cabal.