‘My silence cannot be bought’ is the drum Simon Busuttil keeps beating. He has spent most of the past week, like the one before, telling us he is not prepared to keep schtum on account of a ‘donation’.
Which means he won’t lay off criticising db’s ITS deal or mentioning the ‘threatening’ text message he received from Silvio Debono in the wake of that criticism. He insists there has been a “true political earthquake” that has shaken him up sufficiently to shake up his party to the very epicentre.
If the ‘donation in question’ had been, say, a piddly €3,500, Busuttil might have got away with his self-righteously deflective and defensive remarks. Such an amount would have been both perfectly legal (in line anyway with party financing laws) and plausible: the sort of no-strings ‘tide-us-over’ cash that pays for paper-clips, paint and sealing wax.
But, as it happens, Busuttil’s protestations come very late in the day (at least four years too late) and only after he was cornered by a ‘game-over’ scenario. Those protestations were also a direct reaction to Debono’s indignant (and not unreasonable?) demand that the sums demanded by the Nationalist Party over the years, and by Busuttil in particular, be returned forthwith. We are, of course, talking €70,000 (a year?) to finance the salaries of both the PN secretary general and CEO.
Since the story broke, there has been a good deal of vacillation and back-tracking on Busuttil’s part. His knee-jerk reaction was to deny the allegation that db had been asked to cover top official salaries. Then, rashly and rather foolishly, he called it “dirty money” (dirtying his own hands in the process) and pledged to return the said sum to sender. Next, he changed his mind and conceded that, yes, salaries along with other things were regularly supported by third-party donations, so everything was legal, legit and non-refundable.
And although Busuttil insists that the ITS deal does not sit well with his conscience, the reality is that his deputy leader’s involvement with Debono and the db Group had met with the approval and rubber stamp of the PN conscience for many years before it suddenly became a ‘problem’.
Furnishing full details of the ‘services’ billed to the db Group should be the Opposition leader’s priority… But, oddly enough, Busuttil is having none of it
Busuttil insists that the €70,000 given by Debono to Media.Link was part of a ‘commercial relationship’ for services rendered (that’s ‘coded’ language for you!). But the db Group denies the existence of any such relationship and maintains that the sum was donated at the behest of Busuttil soon after he became party leader, specifically to cover wages.
If Debono is to be believed, this, of course, means that a substantial sum of money (clearly in excess of the €25,000 maximum allowed by the law) was ring-fenced for a very particular purpose. If this is the case – and Debono makes a very strong case – the Nationalist Party has broken the law.
Given the highly contentious nature of the present situation, Busuttil must want nothing more than to wash this mess right out of his hair (shampooing away any lingering doubts). So it seems obvious to me that publishing the invoices and VAT returns, plus furnishing full details of the ‘services’ billed to the db Group, should be the Opposition leader’s priority. It can’t come a moment too soon.
But, oddly enough, Busuttil is having none of it. He insists that a commercial relationship between two companies is, by its very nature, a private one.
Precisely what ‘nature’ of a relationship are we talking about here? And why should it be private? When keeping something private becomes more trouble than it’s worth, you know you’re better off going public. And if you don’t go public, it’s because you can’t – or it looks that way. What then is better: splashing and sinking in lukewarm water or getting into hot water?
Everything seems to point to the easy-to-believe theory that this was money making its way to the party ‘laundered’ through false invoices. And Busuttil knows perfectly well that if the shoe was on the other foot, and if the Prime Minister was the one facing third-party allegations and doggedly refusing to publish invoices, he’d be first in the queue dishing it out to the Labour government. He’d be calling for immediate resignations and, from the sunlit uplands of moral one-upmanship, lamenting the absence of political transparency and accountability.
So I’m afraid I am not at all convinced by Busuttil’s opaque statements, his cock-eyed logic (let’s keep the money, let’s have our cake and eat it, otherwise we are admitting we knew it was wrong), his drip-feed repetitions (‘I will not be blackmailed/I will not shut up’) and finally his crooked logic: Labour are worse than we are, which makes us better, which makes us ‘right’, which makes Labour wrong to find fault with us.
Neither am I particularly impressed by the ‘independent commission’ led by Judge Giovanni Bonello to come up with proposals on party financing. If Busuttil had really wanted a clean sweep, he’d have set up this commission the minute he became leader, and not at the eleventh hour when his back was against the wall.
It’s hardly an enviable position for the leader of the Opposition to be in, especially one year before an election. For all his clamouring, Busuttil seems to have become infected with the same malady he has diagnosed in the present government. It must be contagious.
This doesn’t sound at all like a political earthquake. It’s more like a quaking in your boots. Something in them is pinching the Opposition leader’s feet. He has probing questions he obviously can’t answer, and this means he can’t stand up straight comfortably. Coached, repetitive responses like ‘legal’ and ‘I won’t shut up’ are not enough. Busuttil must not hide behind tact but publish fact.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com