When does a political controversy become a crisis? When news first hits the headlines? Perhaps. When the Opposition starts calling for heads to roll? Maybe. When Joe Demicoli starts singing about it? Most definitely.
For the uninitiated, Mr Demicoli is something of a cult hero in Malta, or at the very least in Maltese cyberspace. His tone may not have the silky beauty of a tenor, but his use of artistic licence hits all the high Cs.
Pre-election classics like Arriva Bomba (a less than complimentary take on the former route bus operator set to the tune of La Bamba) are well known; other more vulgar ones perhaps less so among the Whatsapp-less section of the community. But one thing is for sure: he is able to capture the public’s imagination in an amusing, catchy and devastatingly simple manner.
So, to his latest offering: simply titled Panama. In an unusually video-less parody, this time of The Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann, no names are mentioned, no opinions are expressed. Yet the narrative is littered with the collective ‘we’, followed by various statements about jetting off to surreptitiously deposit cash in the less-than-reputable Caribbean tax haven. ‘No one will know a thing,’ the singer jibes, as a jolly American pilot announces that the plane is about to land (not crash) on the sun-drenched runway.
In less than two minutes, Mr Demicoli manages to sum up what newspaper and blog inches have spent reams of inches mapping out: that whatever the Prime Minister and his Minister of Energy say about the subject in the wake of potentially damning revelations, a rather foul smell continues to linger.
The Labour government’s mistake has been to assume that if it just manages to ride out a few difficult days, the whole thing will go away – much in the same way as other controversies have done the moment they have been overtaken by… another controversy.
Reality is that even if this story does absent itself from the various forms of media that have featured little else in recent days – which is unlikely – the stench will remain. The government’s biggest folly since this controversy erupted has been failing to recognise this.
This is partly due to its approach. It has attempted to brush off the allegations that surround the smoke generated by setting up companies in a State like Panama. Konrad Mizzi’s original reaction was to say he had “no regrets” over the way he had acted. These words, rarely advisable when they come from the mouth of a politician, displayed a profound lack of understanding of the political stakes and failed to acknowledge – at the very least – his shamelessly unpatriotic behaviour.
Embarrassingly, he changed tack within a day or so, saying he would close down the company in Panama. He then accompanied this statement by admitting he had breached local tax laws by failing to register with the Commissioner for Inland Revenue in Malta the New Zealand trust that owns this company.
Yet all this is to miss the point, which is: Why Panama? When Panama? And how is the government going to convince the public that the companies set up by the Energy Minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff were not created with an ulterior motive in mind?
Side-stepping is not going to get them very far. Nor is the Prime Minister’s rather crude attempt to shift focus onto the subject of gay marriage. People want answers. Real answers. Or Joe Demicoli’s next effort just might be a parody of Verdi’s Requiem.