There’s an adage which states that the first victim of war is truth. In the Republic of Malta in the year 2017 there’s no need for war, a scandal at the highest seat of governance is more than sufficient.
I doubt very much that there’s a literate person in the world with a fleeting interest in international news who has not heard of the Panama Papers. The deluge of information that flowed from the secrets had resulted in the end of the careers of a number of politicians abroad; they mostly resigned and spared their countries any more possible damage. Not here, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat ducked and dived about the involvement of his two main acolytes – his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and Minister Konrad Mizzi – more times than the swans that visited Gozo recently.
With the Maltese presidency of the European Council looming, he persisted obstinately in making just a cosmetic change regarding Mizzi and allowed business as usual when it came to Schembri. Even the knowledge that the European Parliament had mandated a committee to investigate Maltese politicians’ involvement in Panama’s secret accounts did not deter him. Hence, the recent visit to Malta of the Pana Committee, which has amply shown that the truth had become the victim of this scandal.
The Prime Minister has recently started to show his hand, namely, that the accusation that he had lied had started to stick and he needed to remedy the situation. Hence, his statement that had been a year in the making: “I say it with much responsibility. Simon Busuttil is a liar.” Wow. A bit of tit for tat.
If people are becoming sceptical of Muscat’s statements regarding various aspects of the Panama scandal, then tarnishing Busuttil with the same brush would do the trick.
How many people have believed the lame way in which Nexia BT have assumed responsibility for Egrant Inc. when the details revealed by the Panama Papers told an entirely different story? In any case, if Nexia is telling the truth, why did they hide it and allowed the Prime Minister to stay under a dark shadow for so long. As Busuttil wrote: “The emperor has no clothes, save a Panama hat.”
Muscat basically is telling the electorate that they have a choice in the next election, which liar electors are going to opt for to form the next government. This is what politics has been reduced to because of the Panama scandal and so many other scandals that we know of. Not proving where the truth lies but asserting the absence of truth on both sides of the political divide.
Not entirely satisfied with his contribution of the previous Sunday, Muscat, having latched on to the word ‘potential’ used by the chairman of the Pana Committee, Werner Langen, when he reported that the Panama leak pointed to ‘potential money laundering’, a week later connived the use of the same word to hit back at Busuttil.
Once truth becomes the victim of corruption, there’s no hope, there’s only deception, half lies, subterfuge and innuendoes
The Prime Minister, speaking as leader of the Labour Party, claimed that there might be a case of ‘potential fraud’ involving a member of the shadow Cabinet. We all know what the implication is supposed to be. If Busuttil does nothing about a case of potential fraud by one of his people why should he be expected to act on Langen’s interim conclusion as a result of the Panama hearings? Again, Muscat is attempting to drag down Busuttil to his own levels.
If proof were needed that these puerile tactics are just a game for Muscat, it was given by the statement attributed to him in Times of Malta (February 27). Addressing Busuttil, Muscat is reported to have said: “The country’s reputation should come first. You should not toy with it. It is a basic principle. If someone has not understood this then they are not ready to be prime minister.”
Here we have a Prime Minister whose first thought after swearing allegiance to the Constitution and even before he had completely appointed his Cabinet, was to connive with Nexia BT to allow his chief of staff and his star minister, Mizzi, to start negotiations to open companies in Panama, and a third one, Egrant Inc, which is still the subject of controversy.
The Panama Papers overshadowed all the other scandals that started with the Café’ Premier saga and still continue to this day with serious allegations of corruption, particularly in the health sector with the sale of three hospitals, including the only State hospital in Gozo, to faceless owners with companies in the British Virgin Islands.
The Prime Minister who cries crocodile’s tears over Malta’s reputation is the same head of a government that, day in, day out, is being called the most corrupt government this country has ever had. When an accusation of corruption was made about one of Eddie Fenech Adami’s administrations, the whole of the Cabinet sued and won damages. He is the same Prime Minister who had two nominees rejected by the European Parliament for the post of members of the European Court of Auditors.
He has the gall to say that Busuttil should not toy with Malta’s reputation, when most of the headlines about Malta’s presidency of the European Council were overshadowed by the pervasive corruption engulfing almost all State institutions. Once truth becomes the victim of corruption, there’s no hope, there’s only deception, half lies, subterfuge and innuendoes.
The Prime Minister must have regretted making a comment about Malta’s reputation, for, as Stephanie Klein said, “tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you”. His comeuppance arrived sooner than expected.
The president of the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Anton Borg, did not mince his words last Monday when he addressed the Prime Minister: “Our business community fears that we are regressing on an important non-cost element of competitiveness. I refer to the country’s reputation in terms of transparency and the integrity of our institutions….”
Muscat put on a brave face and said that, as investment had been coming to this country and is still coming, the Chamber of Commerce did not need to worry. He insisted that businesses did not invest in corrupt countries.
What a crass comment, not worthy of a Prime Minister, who is also president of the European Council.
Corrupt regimes attract plenty of investment into their countries; the problem is who gets the benefits from it and whose pockets or secret companies get ‘populated’ in the process.
Muscat can’t afford to tell the truth to the people, there’s much to lose. His style of government, as an editorial in this paper put it “is not just cynical and tongue-in-cheek, but, above all, very offensive”.