Premier Muscat has decided, inexplicably, to cut his premiership short by a year and to have the shortest possible campaign. The crack about “a week being a long time in politics” has been taken on a whole new meaning.

Mere minutes now telescope into ages.

At 4pm last Thursday, Premier Muscat’s closest advisers did not have an albatross in the form of a criminal investigation draped nattily around their necks. At 4.05pm on the same day, they were suddenly in it up to said necks.

We need to be clear about this: the latest piece of politically incontrovertible evidence that Premier Muscat’s tenure of office will be marked for all time by the stench of corruption.

His spinners and minions, including some media houses that should know better, dutifully played down Magistrate Aaron Bugeja’s order that Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna be placed under criminal investigation.

This order – contrary to the minions’ squeaks – is not a mere insignificance.

As I understand it, the magistrate could easily have found that Simon Busuttil, a private citizen, had not produced enough evidence to ground an investigation. Evidence from a private citizen does not carry the same weight as the Attorney General or the Head Copper saying “jump”, which the duty magistrate must do.

By referring the matter for criminal investigation the magistrate confirmed that suspicions are well in order.

By referring the matter for criminal investigation the magistrate confirmed that suspicions are well in order

Messrs Schembri and Tonna, denizens of offices hard by Premier Muscat’s own, could have appealed the magistrate’s decision. You don’t get the right to an appeal a decision if you do not suffer prejudice from it.

In a few short minutes, another piece of the jigsaw puzzle slotted into place, forming a picture that is horrible for “we the people” to contemplate.

Conversely, the passage of time – and the average citizen’s attention span when confronted with news cycles that are measured in hours rather than days – makes many stories evaporate.

This is what makes Premier Muscat’s decision to give himself the lie and call an early election so downright strange. If, as he has said often enough, he knows he is innocent of all charges related to Egrant and assorted other instances of nefariousness, why did he not let the story just play out?

It is obvious that the Panama Papers story had moved on: his Malta Today trust rating was holding firm, despite his closest collaborators having starring roles in it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, people had become bored with the story and there is every indication that a similar fate might have befallen the Egrant story.

There’s more: observers have cited solid indicators that Premier Muscat had made up his mind to go for an early election before the flames of Egrant had started to singe him.

Mere weeks ago, he said that the elections would be held in March 2018, with the EU presidency safely out of the way. Something happened between then and the Egrant story breaking to change his mind, radically.

Egrant can’t be the reason why Premier Muscat chose to throw the dice.

Premier Muscat’s good buddies certainly did not greet his early election wheeze with undiluted pleasure. Many were highly discombobulated and pretty furious that their stay at the trough had been cut short. None of them were taken into Premier Muscat’s confidence as to the real reason he suddenly decided to go for broke.

Will all be revealed in the coming weeks?

It will be like Doctor Who on steroids, with time bending and fracturing as stories about Premier Joseph Muscat reverberate around our current universe.

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