It is widely accepted – except by Simon Busuttil and the PN – that Konrad Mizzi had committed an error of judgement when deciding to accept his financial advisor’s recommendation to set up a shell company in Panama. Mizzi has admitted as much and, in Parliament, he apologised to the Maltese people for his error, something no other minister has ever done at any time.

For his error of judgement Mizzi has suffered not only political consequences but also personally, as was clearly explained by Godfrey Farrugia in his emotional speech in Parliament.

I am certain no politician exists, anywhere in the world, who throughout his/her political career has not committed an error of judgement. As long as the error was not intentional, I cannot see much wrong in that. This applies also to all politicians, past, present and future.

I will just mention two examples of errors of judgement.

The first was by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat on the Cafe Premier case. He had admitted this.

The second was by Busuttil on the ‘works for votes’ in Gozo case when, instead of taking action by referring the person to the police, he told the whistleblower: “Why did you continue the works when you knew the PN was going to lose the election?” Busuttil still hasn’t accepted he had made an error of judgement.

What is important is that no errors of judgement are made intentionally. Politicians, especially those holding high office, normally make important decisions on a daily if not hourly basis.

It is normal that some of those decisions may, in time, turn out to have been the result of an error of judgement. What is most important is that when that happens lessons are learned to avoid a repetition, even though one cannot guarantee other errors of judgement will  never happen again as long as decisions continue to be taken.