It’s been one of those weeks, two of them actually. My head has been submerged in a fraught custody case which has frayed my nerves, left me sapped of energy, allowing me time for little else and certainly no time to read the newspapers. And of course, as luck would have it, it has been one of the most eventful two weeks, politically speaking, of the year – Christmas for columnists by any other name.

My habitual readers pass me by on Republic Street, Valletta, smile knowingly and tell me that I’ll have lots to write about and that they’re in for a treat. I nod in feigned agreement, taking my cue from current affairs guru Christiane Amanpour.

The moral of the story perhaps is that Christmas is always a bit of an anti-climax, even when it’s March and not the real deal. Faced with all that food, you suddenly lose your appetite.

Similarly, inundated with all these news stories – Premier League scandal regarding Café Premier (an exorbitant €4.2 million buy-back government deal guaranteed to raise eyebrows and suspicion) and out-of-the-PN-blue tax-evasion disclosures which continue to undermine those very golden Nationalist Party years – I suddenly find myself suffering from choice-overload.

The discovery that two former Nationalist ministers were among the hoarding ‘Gnomes of Zurich’ has since been eclipsed by the much more imminent, obscene and in-your-face Café Premier deal, which until now has remained rather moot and out-there. Why exactly it happened and what lurks within, we still don’t know.

The Prime Minister has refuted claims that this decision was the result of a pre-election deal. He has also denied that the Labour Party stood to gain any political donation as a result, and has indicated that what may admittedly look like bad procedure and governance was carried out with the best intentions. A ‘good lie’, if you like. And yet, something smells rotten. And this time it’s neither Swiss cheese nor the State of Denmark.

I will not pretend to have been massively surprised and shocked by either story. This is not because they are not shocking but because such things don’t surprise me.

There has never been any doubt in my mind that politics is a dirty business and politicians will invariably have to get their hands dirty at some time or other if they want to get things done. But when they alone stand to gain (as in the case of grossly under-declared earnings and personal tax-evasion), there can be no redeeming feature.

In a world of ‘grey areas’, it is easy to justify tax evasion or deem it clever, savvy and even something to applaud. But there really can’t be any grey areas when it comes to tax. You either pay it or you don’t. And if you don’t, you risk being ‘found out’, and then you pay for it in other more unfortunate ways. This is because the lie is always more reprehensible than the wrongdoing.

There really can’t be any grey areas when it comes to tax. You either pay it or you don’t

Of course, the failure to issue a fiscal receipt is also cheating. Running a business from your home below the radar of the competent authorities and without proper compliance constitutes a crime.

Paying cash for a service to avoid being charged VAT is deceitful. How many of us can say, hand on heart, that we have always been completely above-board in all of our dealings?

They definitely do exist – old-world, morally impeccable folk who will issue a fiscal receipt for all of one euro and who wouldn’t dream of ever breaking the law. But they are the exception, not the rule.

So, do we even have the right to hold our politicians to the highest of standards if we ourselves aren’t squeaky clean? Yes, I suppose we do. Ultimately, the betrayal is always far worse when it concerns an MP – someone elected to represent us and who has promised us political integrity and transparency.

I write this on behalf of all those very angry taxpayers, those civil servants, government and other employees on fixed salaries whose tax is always deducted at source and who have bailed out banks and governments and have never had any opportunity to stash any sum of money anywhere.

I write too for those who live on the breadline and minimum wage and who sweat bullets every time they religiously fill in their tax returns, fearing they may have left a box unticked and eventually have to face the wrath of the Commissioner for Inland Revenue or the Tax Department.

How can the government expect compliance if its very own are breaking the law? If the government is collecting taxes from the ordinary man in the street, it has a duty to ensure that it is also collecting taxes from the minister who is being chauffeured to work at the taxpayer’s expense. That people continue to get away with this sort of thing is the worrying part, and it’s precisely because governments obviously don’t have the resources or the political will to chase them and hold them accountable.

And of course tax revenue is all-important in a country like Malta, which is in the PL-red, still so shabby in parts and with a huge black economy. When I think of those €4.2 million which the government paid to evict tenants from a property which would eventually return to them anyway, I wonder how many potholes and pavements could have been made good in the process.

The tide has turned in other countries and perhaps it is beginning to turn in Malta too. I think both governments have had to learn this the hard way, though they continue to make mistakes and feed off each other’s errors and bad judgements.

The truth of the matter is that political corruption is colour blind. It is endemic in both parties who, I’m afraid, are equally incapable of colourless transparency.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com

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