Malta’s libel laws need an overhaul

The Labour Party’s deputy leader, Toni Abela

Yes, I am pleased at the outcome of the case, but I had no doubt it would be otherwise. Nor did the deputy leader of the Labour Party, which is why he repeatedly invented reasons to have sittings postponed so that the whole thing dragged on for seven years and he even, in the early stages, asked my lawyer to talk to persuade me to issue an apology and retraction so that he would drop the case.

You can imagine what my reaction was to that. I mean, honestly.

Those who are celebrating the victory of common sense in this case had better stop and think instead about how little common sense – or justice, for that matter – there is in a system which allows a politician to harass a journalist in this manner by dragging her up and down from court for seven years for describing him as an incompetent clown.

And because the deputy leader of the party in Opposition, now the party in government, was his own lawyer, and not just the plaintiff, I also had to put up with his aggressive behaviour and rudeness as I stood in the witness stand (having been summoned repeatedly) while he cross-examined me on behalf of his client (himself).

Every time I have to appear in court because I have been summoned by some screwed-up politician or other weirdo who doesn’t understand the concept of freedom of expression in a democracy, I have to take a morning off work besides leaving the house at 7.30am to struggle through the traffic, find somewhere to park, and be at the Courts of Justice for 9am. My work piles up, I am put through the harassment of being in court and I am expected to feel intimidated and threatened (chance would be a fine thing by now).

And this not because I lied about a fact and said that a politician murdered somebody when he did not, but because I expressed an opinion. Yes, the law allows people to sue for literally anything that is written about them, even if it is an opinion and even if it is harmless. This is because there is no filtering process at the start, and if the politician or weirdo can find a lawyer who will file a suit even when there is no case, the suit will be filed and you spend years in court until the magistrate, who is obliged to go through the procedure of hearing the sides for and against, throws it out.

The number of purely vexatious libel suits in our courts is piling up. The harassment caused to journalists and newspapers is beyond belief.

There appears to be no sense of alarm – because there is no understanding – about the fact that the system as it stands is literally the perfect vehicle for unscrupulous politicians, and those politicians with no respect for the role of journalists in a democracy, to harass those journalists who criticise them, by filing incessant libel suits.

And worse still, some of them don’t even file a civil suit but file a complaint with the police instead, leading to the journalist’s prosecution for criminal defamation, which carries the penalty of a prison sentence or a large fine, and which gives the journalist a criminal record.

Yes, the archaic laws of Malta allow politicians (and others) to report journalists to the police and have them prosecuted for criminal defamation – for criticising them. This because the police make no attempt to examine whether there is a case and simply go ahead and prosecute, passing the buck to the courts. They reason that if you are not guilty then you won’t be found guilty anyway, so what is the fuss? Well, the fuss is the ordeal of prosecution and going up to and down from the Courts for years.

And that is aside from the fact that no civilised country or democracy has a system in which politicians are enabled to use criminal defamation to silence or intimidate members of the press who criticise them.

Malta is backward because its people are: most literally do not understand the threats and dangers inherent in this system.