In his telling letter of resignation addressed to the Prime Minister immediately after the vote in Parliament in favour of the opposition motion, Ambassador Richard Cachia Caruana said: “My decades of work in politics and related fields have taught me that it is naïve to assume that the principles of correctness and decency will not, occasionally, be corrupted.
“While righteousness will, ultimately, prevail, it does not necessarily do so in the short term, to order, or in ways that may be immediately evident.”
Mr Cachia Caruana will not only be remembered as Malta’s first Permanent Representative to the European Union who very ably served his country, representing our nation’s interests with the utmost dedication, but also as the key person who had seen to Malta’s negotiations to join the EU by coordinating with incredible capability the entire process of bringing our country in line with the acquis communautaire.
The Labour Party had strongly opposed EU membership and had even declared, its present leadership included, that Malta had not voted in favour of membership.
Methinks that the PL has not forgiven Mr Cachia Caruana for being, at the technical level, the man who managed to make membership possible and, then, to ensure success out of EU membership.
Evidently, the PL has forgiven him even less for being one of the key PN strategists who ensured success in one difficult election after another since 1981.
I have made it a point to attend all the meetings of the Foreign and European Affairs Committee – no fewer than seven meetings apart from the preparatory one – spanning over 14.5 hours. During those meetings, the Prime Minister gave evidence for nearly seven hours, Ambassador Cachia Caruana for just over six hours and the Attorney General, who was requested to turn up on the insistence of the opposition, gave evidence for an hour and a half.
The meetings were ably chaired by Francis Zammit Dimech, who tried his best to ensure opposition members observe the barest minimum of what should be regarded as basic rules of decency when dealing with a witness.
This included the obligation of sticking to their own motion as opposed to wandering off to irrelevant issues, such as his level of pay or involvement with the PN.
In simple language, it’s the fundamental rule of relevance but for the opposition, relevance was hardly what it were after. This point was, correctly, not missed by Lino Spiteri in his feature on the day that the motion was to be discussed in Parliament.
This in itself, raises the spectre of what the opposition was really after in tabling its motion against Ambassador Cachia Caruana to ensure, just as it did with Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, his resignation.
In his speech in Parliament on Monday, after explaining the opposition had not presented one iota of proof to support its motion, Dr Zammit Dimech recalled the famous words of Sir Thomas More to Thomas Cromwell in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons.
When judgement against him was about to be pronounced, leading to his beheading , the medieval chancellor said:
“You have your desire of me. What you have hunted me for is not my actions but the thoughts of my heart… God help the people whose statesmen walk your road.”
The PL in opposition must be enjoying itself. In metaphorical terms, it is going for one political beheading after another.
Does its MPs’ “successes” make them fit to govern our country?
Not if we realise that their actions speak of the worst possible form of opportunism, of not caring about the truth, of moving to punish those with whom they disagree irrespective of their merits, of rubbishing public officers instead of focusing on where political responsibility resides, of even gleefully declaring that they have no need to present proof to support their allegations and, worse still, of acting in a manner that truly damages Malta and the national interest.
Let their political beheadings serve as a national “wake up” call before it is too late.