Another one bites the dust and he is former Nationalist minister Joseph Cassar.
It is a strategic win for Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who wants to deflect attention away from the successive scandals characterising his premiership. Again and again, the government’s rhetoric has been that it has inherited a corruption system from the previous administration. With every day that passes, however, that excuse becomes more and more lame.
But, now, the ball is back in Dr Muscat’s court. What is he going to do about his own Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon, whose secretariat is embroiled in a far more serious scandal involving the same Gaffarena family that has brought Dr Cassar down?
Dr Muscat said yesterday the Cassar case was a “big test” for Opposition leader Simon Busuttil to prove he was not a man of “double standards”. He got his reply that very same day. Dr Cassar is gone. The PN leader has passed the test but the same cannot be said for Dr Muscat.
No one has taken political responsibility for the results of an inquiry by the Prime Minister’s own internal audit and investigations department that has found that the land granted to Marco Gaffarena as payment for Valletta property expropriated from him went beyond the 30 per cent ceiling that such land valuations cannot exceed. The political responsibility for that falls squarely on Dr Falzon’s shoulders.
Instead, we have a former Nationalist minister, who clearly should have known better, who had to resign as party spokesman because he allegedly allowed works at his home to be paid for by businessman Joe Gaffarena.
It was clear some months ago that things had gone sour between Dr Cassar and Mr Gaffarena when the latter said it was Dr Cassar who had set up a meeting between him and then PN deputy leader Busuttil before the last election. That meeting was abruptly cut short when the issue of an illegal petrol station owned by the Gaffarena family came up.
Last week in Parliament, Dr Cassar accused the Labour Party of trying to frame him up over the case of a second-hand car he bought for his daughter from Mr Gaffarena, who would not accept payment for it. Dr Cassar donated the money to the PN instead.
Dr Cassar was yesterday more specific. He said: “Though I have done nothing that breaches the law, I have allowed an unscrupulous person to take advantage of me. The fact that this happened some three years ago is no excuse and I apologise unreservedly to the electorate for my error of judgement.”
There are many lessons to be learnt from this episode.
The PN leader should not rush to the defence of people within his ranks until he knows the full facts.
Politicians should also beware of what company they keep, even if everything is “legal”, because the difference between what is legal and what is ethical could not be more pronounced as happened in this case.
The PN leader has promised a new way of doing politics, one that is based on honesty. What he did yesterday cannot go unnoticed, especially in view of an electorate that is growing increasingly cynical of the political class.
Most of all, now that Dr Cassar no longer forms part of the shadow Cabinet, the question to put is: what is the Prime Minister going to do about the Gaffarena scandal that has haunted his government for so long, is far more serious, more recent and much more closer to home?