Opinion: Repressive Ramona

Ramona Attard just stepped down as Labour Party President.  In her farewell speech at the party conference, she announced her next mission – to introduce humanity to politics.

She’s seen too many lives destroyed, she said. So now she’s lobbying to financially ruin government critics by dramatically raising fines for libel.

She wants to jail journalists who “slander” Labour officials by re-introducing criminal libel. She supports imprisonment as a punishment for slander.

She wants to revise the Act on Standards in Public Life to deny citizens the right to file “frivolous complaints”, which annoys the prime minister.

These are the tools of autocrats to stifle critics, throttle dissenters, and extinguish opposition.  Equally disturbing was the raucous applause with which Labour delegates welcomed her proposals.

In 2004, the OSCE published a document called ‘Ending the Chilling Effect’ outlining efforts to repeal criminal libel and insult laws. The work to decriminalise libel and insult laws had been ongoing for years. Their first objective was to “de-prisonise” libel and insult laws.

OSCE categorically stated that punishing libel with a prison sentence was a disproportionate measure and an obsolete overreaction in the 21st century. Not for Labour. Ramona Attard vociferously supports imprisonment for slander.

The next logical step, the OSCE insisted, was to fully de-criminalise libel to help make way for a more civilised and appropriate response through civil code provisions.

Punitive libel laws, which Attard is proposing, are meant only to give special protection to high-ranking politicians from criticism and public scrutiny. The OSCE declared such laws “have no place in a modern democratic society”.

The OSCE was also highly critical of “high fines” that “exert a chilling effect on journalists just as great as prison sentences”. That’s exactly what Ramona wants.

Labour remains Labour, a party with a vicious streak of authoritarian repression. Attard voices the Labour majority view that journalists are the enemy and must be eliminated and that critics must be bribed or intimidated into silence.

She called for the revision of the Standards in Public Life Act and complained that government critics were abusing it to “intimidate the authorities from deciding and speaking.”

She moaned that ministers were being prevented from rebutting the Opposition’s harsh attacks.  She claimed complaints lodged with the Commissioner were utterly baseless, “just a fishing expedition”.

Besides, they were wasting the prime minister’s time. Even worse, they were “annoying him”, Ramona moaned. Those complaints, she insisted, were just a weapon of intimidation.

“Do those who are launching these attacks have the decency to think about the impact they are leaving on the life and mental health of their targets?” she asked. “I am tired of seeing people destroyed,” she added.

Attard knows what destroying lives is.  As Labour President, she’s overseen the party’s media channels, destroying lives every day.

She wants to bring humanity back into politics after elevating the dehumanisation of perceived critics or opponents to an art form during her time as president.

They’ve done it to Roberta Metsola, Bernard Grech, Desmond Zammit Marmara, Konrad Borg Manche, Mark Camilleri, Robert Aquilina and several journalists who refuse to be compromised.

I’ve lost count of the malicious ONE news items about me, replete with footage of my children. Ramona Attard defended those malicious attacks at the Broadcasting Authority.

They’ve targeted Magistrate Gabriella Vella for her conclusions on the hospitals inquiry. They splashed images of her on TV, inciting viewers against her.  They targeted her father and brother.  They accused her of political terrorism. They subjected her to relentless attacks, knowing she couldn’t defend herself.

Attard reinforced Robert Abela’s despicable message that the magistrate’s timing of the conclusion of the Vitals inquiry was politically motivated and maliciously intended to harm Labour.

She was president of the Labour Party while Karl Stagno Navarra conducted a public witch hunt of private individuals whose details were exposed on ONE TV.

She supported Labour’s stance as a Party that relentlessly hounded Daphne Caruana Galizia, depicting her as a witch.

The Labour Party froze the assets of a journalist who had exposed their corruption, forcing her to rely on her husband’s chequebook to pay for anything. Daphne Caruana Galizia couldn’t even walk in the street without being spat at, abused, or chased by Labour mayor Natius Farrugia.

Glenn Bedingfield published photos of her car on his blog post, providing the number plate to prospective murderers. Labour’s tactics resulted in the journalist being blown up in a car bomb, and then Labour proceeded to insult her family and vindictively clear her memorial repeatedly.

Labour has refused to implement the recommendations of the Caruana Galizia inquiry, which would protect journalists from facing the same toxic environment. It denigrated the judges who made those recommendations for the safety of journalists and the rule of law in Malta.

But Attard continues in Labour’s tradition, threatening to reintroduce criminal libel: “We must act because we are in government.”

Still, she claims she’ll introduce humanity into politics – now, when she’s stepping down.  She had four years to do that. Instead, together with Labour’s leaders, she turned the Party and its TV station into a weapon of dehumanisation, a torture chamber for Labour critics, an axe with which to bludgeon those who dare reveal the truth.

Attard wants to protect the most powerful man in the country, Robert Abela.  She wants to shield his Party from scrutiny and criticism. She wants to weaponise the law to stifle the free press.

There is nothing remotely liberal or progressive in Ramona Attard or her Labour Party. She is Labour’s poster girl for repressive autocracy, a woman with a dystopian vision of a one-party state with a supreme leader freed from annoying complaints to the Standards Commissioner and where critics are fined into destitution or jailed for “slandering” Labour politicians.