Guest Post: Labour Ministers Byron Camilleri And Owen Bonnici On ‘Delivering Change’
Most of the time, change is the hardest thing to do. People throw everything at you so that you do not change things; the status quo is the comfort zone.
But if you have a clear vision of where you want to go, suddenly, taking the route of change becomes the easiest decision you ever take.
This is how we felt when it transpired that a private individual decided to weaponise some legal provisions in our criminal laws and point them against a number of artists whose only crime was to poke fun at him through artistic satire for some stupid things he had said before.
Swiftly we concluded that we could not sit idly watching artists being dragged to Court as if they were some cheap criminals.
We had to act.
And that’s what we did.
At the very first opportunity, we kickstarted the legislative process to propose amendments to existing laws to strengthen artistic freedom of expression.
Then after a few days, we walked the talk and published chapter and verse about which legal provisions we wanted to change and how we would change them.
We acted decisively and expeditiously because this strong sense of conviction drove us. We were and are 100% convinced that increasing artistic freedom of expression is undoubtedly the right thing, and we need to do it now.
Why is it the right thing to do? Because it is in the interest of artists to ply their trade and put their creativity to reality without having at the back of their minds the fear of landing in trouble with the police for something they say or do.
Because it is in the interest of our country to have freedom of artistic expression so that we have stronger, healthier and self-critical societies. Because it is in the interest of creativity to be able to freely wander and delve into subjects which were, up till that moment of change ,deemed out of bounds.
This is not the first time we have undertaken reforms to strengthen the freedom of artistic and journalistic expression.
In recent years we have thrown criminal libel out of the window, deleted whole sections of obsolete provisions which had a chilling effect on artists and creativity and drew up whole new laws which drew praise from various quarters.
All this brought about an intense energy of creative expression in our country.
Until we saw once again the ugly prospect of artists being arraigned in court because of their creativity, work and artistic expression. And that’s why we acted and intervened immediately with carefully thought-out amendments which will make a whole lot of a difference.
We are a reformist Government. We change things. We are change agents.
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