In the past few days the two main political parties have each had to contend with a major issue that reflected upon their values, upon the quality of their administration and upon their relationship with the truth.
For the Nationalist Party, it was the Enemalta oil buying scandal. Two men have been arraigned over their alleged role in the affair and both had been appointed to that role by a Nationalist government.
Although the Opposition has wheeled its cannon in the direction of Minister Austin Gatt, who was responsible for Enemalta at the time, no evidence has so far emerged to suggest that he was involved.
Rather, Cabinet recommended a presidential pardon that paved the way for the commencement of criminal proceedings and, as the PN was quick to point out, the party in government can hardly be accused of protecting their own from the course of justice.
On the other hand, two of the top men at the Labour Party, leader Joseph Muscat and the deputy leader for party affairs Tony Abela, are facing precisely a contrary slur: that, unlike the Government, they failed to act in the best interests of crime prevention in order to spare embarrassment to their party.
The details are well known and involve a report made by the president of an undisclosed Labour club to Dr Abela, in which drug handling in the bar area of the club was alleged.
Labour terminated the barman’s contract but did not report him or the alleged presence-of-drugs incident to the police.
When details of this became known to the wider public last week, Dr Abela took full and sole responsibility for what, in his words, was an exercise of discretion. We have already stated that in our opinion his duty was to report the matter to police.
He also insisted that he acted alone, stating: “I did not burden the leader of the party with these problems.”
It has now emerged, however, that the leader of the party was indeed fully briefed because he admitted as much after the PN published revelatory correspondence to this effect.
Dr Muscat has attempted to dodge the obvious missiles hurled in his direction claiming that he did not realise which party club was at the heart of the incident, given that the location was not disclosed. He said he was confused by the fact that there had been another incident involving a block of ice.
There is no doubt he will continue to be questioned on this case in the coming days and that the public will have ample opportunity to decide whether or not he has been truthful.
With respect to Dr Abela, however, no more time is required to assess whether or not he was correct when he said his leader “knew nothing about this” because after the PN presented evidence, Dr Muscat himself confirmed that he had in fact been informed.
In less than a week, therefore, Dr Abela has been accused of being involved in not one but two cover-ups.
In the first case he turned a blind eye to alleged abuse use of hard drugs in a public place that is Labour Party property. In the second, his assertion that the Labour leader was not informed has been exposed.
If Dr Abela did not feel it was time to fall upon his sword last week, it is difficult to see how he does not feel the time is appropriate now.