Last Wednesday evening, timesofmalta.com ran the headline: ‘Minister’s declarations of assets tabled in Parliament; Mizzi declares Panama company and NZ trust’. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so painfully true. But unfortunately this is what we’ve come to.
Common sense dictates that once a Cabinet Minister is caught with a secret company in Panama, he resigns the minute the wall of secrecy around his company collapses. Not in Malta, where the minister involved in this political scandal declares it in Parliament, two months after his cover was blown.
Barely 24 hours after he tabled his declaration of assets, the Prime Minister announced that Mizzi was to be retained as a Cabinet member, and Keith Schembri was to keep his post as chief of staff. What’s more, Mizzi is now a minister without portfolio, which in effect is a promotion because he can involve himself in a wide array of areas and decisions.
Honest, hardworking people are wondering why Mizzi is still a Cabinet member and an MP, and what on earth the Prime Minister was thinking by supporting his energy minister when untold harm that is being done to Malta’s reputation.
Walk out on the street this morning and ask the first 10 people you meet what is the first thing that comes to mind in the current political situation. You can bet your life it won’t be the PN’s Skema Ċedoli, or Beppe Fenech Adami’s pool, or the works carried out at a property owned by Mario de Marco for which he paid in full, as Labour would have us believe.
At the root of Panamagate is not just tax and money, it’s about inequality too
No, the first nine will probably say Panama and Konrad Mizzi, and the 10th will probably ask: “What on earth was the PM thinking in keeping Mizzi in his Cabinet?”
It’s really and truly the case of a free fall without a parachute, as the death metaphors are flowing in a dark torrent of despair from well-meaning citizens. Never, not even once, did Mizzi express regret for what he did, let alone think of stepping down. His insistence that he did nothing wrong and that he was planning to include the Panama company and the New Zealand trust in his declaration of assets teeters into ludicrousness.
His position became untenable the moment journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia exposed his secret financial set-up, and that was two long months ago. Since then, he has limped on, reassured by his Prime Minister’s unconditional support.
To add insult to injury, Muscat went on to appoint him as Labour’s deputy leader and has now removed him from the post. In so doing, he rendered the deputy leadership election an organised farce.
But what happened in Parliament last Wednesday was as shocking as it was insulting. Mizzi would have us believe that by declaring the Panama shell company and the New Zealand trust in his declaration of assets he was being transparent in his financial affairs. Words fail me. Were it not for Ms Caruana Galizia who blew his cover, and the independent press which followed the story daily, for two months, we would have never known of Mizzi’s secret financial structure.
Two months ago, Muscat told us that Mr Mizzi was planning to list his secret company and New Zealand trust in his declaration of assets. It must be ghastly to say something when you know that every person listening has decided that you are trying, unsuccessfully, to take them for a ride.
Secret financial structures are meant to be just that – they are not meant to be listed in parliamentary declarations of assets. People who set up shell companies in Panama do so because they know that their financial structures are kept under lock and key and no auditor or tax commissioner is able to investigate what lies within that financial structure.
The absolute majority of government MPs are desperate to see the back of Mizzi, a couple of them even venting their frustrations in public, but in the end they did not have the stomach for a kill.
The news staff at Newsbook listened to all 13 hours of the debate in Parliament on Monday last week, in the lead-up to the confidence vote in government, and counted the number of time MPs mentioned ‘Konrad Mizzi’ and ‘Panama’. The results put to shame all government MPs. Not one government MP mentioned Mizzi, and the only two who mentioned Panama were the Prime Minister and Mizzi himself. The subject of the debate was the Panama Papers and Mizzi’s secret company, but they ignored the subject matter completely, and it was screamingly obvious that they were religiously following a script written at Castille.
There are times when politicians are put on the spot, and they have to decide in an instant which side they are on. Instead of piling pressure on their boss to show him the door, government MPs chose to protect their vested interests, and in so doing, ridiculed Malta and did a huge disservice to its people.
But, at the root of Panamagate is not just tax and money, it’s about inequality too. By choosing Panama, Mizzi sought to exit our economic system, in which hardworking Maltese men and women work and pay their taxes, and sought refuge outside it. Mizzi does not want to play by the same rules that Maltese taxpayers have to follow.