The Prime Minister has informed the nation, on a Sunday morning, that he is busy trying to unravel the ‘tangled webs’ around him. Somewhat ominously, his choice of phrase echoes the title of the final episode in Yes, Prime Minister, the popular BBC comedy of the 1980s.
It was called Tangled Webs and revolved around the Prime Minister’s denial to Parliament that telephones were being tapped. Afterwards, his secretary Sir Humphrey struggled to explain the gravity of this to him: “I mean you… lied. Yes, I know, this is a difficult concept to get across to a politician.”
Joseph Muscat spoke of tangled webs just when Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela was being accused of lying about the government’s intentions to purchase Palazzo Verdelin in Valletta from Mark Gaffarena. Not that this made any difference, as so many people have now been revealed as having links with the Gaffarena family that the entire story feels like it has been run over by a bus. Not that I want to drag Joe Mizzi into it, mind you.
This may well have been the intention, to complicate the issue to the point that nobody can understand what it is all about. Is everyone guilty or is everyone innocent? Who is carrying the blood-stained dagger?
Perhaps our dear old-fashioned detective, Monsieur Hercule Poirot, could gather everyone in the sitting room and expose the plot, twitching his moustache and pointing his finger at the true culprit sitting nervously on one of the sofas.
The Prime Minister should stop ordering endless inquiries and pointing fingers at others, while the scandals in his office and under his watch continue to accumulate
Was it Beppe Fenech Adami, reclining on the blue armchair by the window, who was one of the lawyers of the Gaffarena family some years ago, and attended some of their parties? Hmm, probably not. Surely it can’t be Joe Sammut, under the fringed lampshade, who was also their legal counsel and may have had business connections with the family? Or Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, who also represented them, or their former architect Charles Buhagiar?
Was it former PN general secretary Joe Saliba, listening at the door, who six years ago sold part of a block of flats to Gaffarena? No, too passé for the Verdelin case.
Was it one of the 12 heirs of Palazzo Verdelin, assembled near the piano, who receive a peppercorn rent and were saddled with Gaffarena becoming a co-owner of their property once he purchased the shares of another heir? Definitely not.
Could it have been Roderick Galdes, who voted in favour of sanctioning Gaffarena’s petrol station at the Mepa Board in 2011, and whose ministry vehicles have recently been buying large amounts of fuel there? Or perhaps Joe Falzon, who also voted in favour? Or Michael Farrugia, who defended giving the petrol station a temporary permit last year? Surely not.
What about Michael Falzon, trying to look inconspicuous on the red sofa near the Chinese birdcage? Poirot’s sharp eye suddenly falls upon him, but he knows he must wait for various simultaneous and complicated inquiries to be concluded, before ruling him out too.
Abela stands up and protests that he had nothing to do with deals regarding Palazzo Verdelin, but that it is to remain in use as a police station. Last but not least is Muscat, but he has an alibi as he was in Azerbaijan with Konrad Mizzi.
Fra Jean-Jacques de Verdelin might soon feel inclined to turn in his grave in the Chapel of Our Lady of Philermos at St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta. The inscription on his elaborate marble tombstone, laid on his death in 1673, solicits passers-by to stop and mourn.
It lists his distinguished achievements in Malta as Prefect of the Armoury, General of the militias in Gozo, Magistrate of the legions, benefactor and restorer of the shrine of St Michael. At the age of 76 he became Grand Commander. He was “a vanquisher of the Turks in naval expeditions” and “a strenuous soldier of Christ, stained on a hundred occasions with the blood of the enemy, on seven with his own”.
He built Palazzo Verdelin, or L’Hostel de Verdelin, in the mid-17th century as his residence in Valletta. The building is attributed to the accomplished Tuscan architect and military engineer Francesco Buonamici from Lucca, who worked in Malta in the service of the Knights of St John. It has one of the most ornate Baroque facades in Valletta and is also known as the ‘Casa delle Colombe’ due to the doves carved in stone around the windows. Today it is scheduled as a Grade One building.
Ruling out all the suspects in Poirot’s detective story above, the involvement of the Government Lands Department in the possible sale of Palazzo Verdelin, as well as in the recent acquisition of the house in Old Mint Street, remains an unsolved mystery without a satisfactory ending. Its role in the Café Premier deal also falls very short of expectations.
Today the Lands Department falls under the Prime Minister, who should stop ordering endless inquiries and pointing fingers at others, while the scandals in his office and under his watch continue to accumulate on a weekly basis.
The buck stops there. A tangled web, indeed.
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