To my mind the most fundamental value is that of asserting the truth and providing every person total access to all the required information to be able to ascertain the truth. That is why freedom of expression is even more about every citizen’s right to receive information without hindrance than about the right of each and every one of us to pronounce ourselves as we choose.

Democracy thrives on information. As is said of professional journalism, facts should be sacred while comment is free. People need to know the facts to form their own judgement. In the UK, Jack Straw had succintly pointed out: “Democracy is about conceding power to those with whom you disagree, not to those with whom you agree; and about ensuring that every citizen has a smilar access to the information on which decisions are made and governments are judged.” That should mean that all political debate should ideally be limited to expressing different opinions, different perspectives, and different schools of thought but when it comes to facts we should be able to call whatever is black, black, whatever is white, white.

This is where the government has miserably failed the people with regard to Panamagate – the worst ever scandal of sleaze, corruption and dishonesty to rock an entire world and to, unforunately, also hit our own country.

I am possibly expecting too much out of our Prime Minister to be honest about this issue. Panamagate is ultimately the result of dishonesty – hiding one’s assets in a secret company, placing that secret company in another secret trust – doing it thousands of kilometres away from home and choose a jurisdiction that guaranatees and encourages secrecy to serve dishonest purposes.

There is no doubt that whoever opted for Panama simply hoped that he would never be found out and his name never revealed. A reward for the ultimate in naivette is offered to anyone genuinely believing that the Prime Minister’s most trusted minister or chief of staff would have volunteered the information about what they set out to do within days of Labour winning the last election had the leaks not been made by investigative whisteblowers and journalists who can only be commended for their courage.

A degree of honesty at least after the leaks was then the barest minimum expected. As one leak followed another, I initially felt that this was too bad to be true.

Genine Labourites discuss with me the significance of it all. I encourage them to look at the facts.

The ink had not dried on the most trusted minister’s oath of office that his financial advisers began the process to open up a secret company on his behalf in Panama. The same was done for the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

A degree of honesty at least after the leaks was then the barest minimum expected

Attempts were made with as many as nine different banks to open up an account for that company. The justification for the opening up of the accounts ranged from brokerage to handling waste management contracts in India and carrying out remote gaming businesses. When told that the opening up of such accounts required a deposit of at least $1 million per year, the instructions given were clear: go ahead.

Any honourable person caught up in this mess would have resigned immediately. Any serious Prime Minister would have dismissed such persons rather than hold on to them, vigorously defend them and seek to rule the country with them.

Had that happened from the very outset, the Prime Minister would have managed to secure closure. Instead, he chose to keep the national wound wide open and make matters worse by deciding to spite the people and retain the persons concerned. Too bad to be true but, unfortunately, it is all true. It is bizarre and surreal.

To add insult to injury, the Labour Party propaganda machine makes false accusations against other persons. The latest attack is directed against me. I challenge them to do a search on the Panama Papers database and my name – in a personal capacity – does NOT crop up! What does result is that a legal entity of which I no longer form part (since nearly a year and a half ago) offered fiduciary services as licensed by Malta’s own Financial Services Authority to clients. I never owned, do not own and never intend to own any secret company in Panama or elsewhere. It’s that simple.

What is the Malta code to understand, to crack this surreal experience?

The code is not unduly complicated – there is one basic key – simply invert the meaning of anything you hear from the government side.

We already knew that Tagħna Lkoll means ‘only for us’ and that meritocracy means promoting many without any merit whatoseover.

Now we need to expand our dictionary. ‘Listening to the people’ means at best ‘hearing the people with the intention of ignoring them’, ‘taking decisions’ means ‘retaining the status quo’, ‘being transparent’ means ‘entering into countless muti-million contracts on behalf of the people and hiding them’, ‘reshuffling’ means ‘reaffirming’, ‘open government’ means ‘to govern behind closed doors’, ‘it is not an issue of conscience’ means ‘I have no conscience’, ‘delivers’ means ‘not fit (after some re-thinking) to serve as party deputy leader but fit to remain a super minister even if he misses crucial deadlines’ and ‘rebuke’ means ‘praise’.

And the latest: ‘A lawyer who assists a client’ becomes ‘the client’. I must really express my solidarity with all lawyers who unlike me (I never did!) work in the criminal field!

Too bad to be true but true nonetheless and we can expect even worse.

It is a situation of total disbelief, where the people react to the governing clique by affirming that they are not willing to be duped any further.

Our ulitmate and most fundamental cause is to stand up for the truth – promoting honesty in politics. This is the commitment that Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil is making to the people and he means it.

Let us restore trust in our political system. All of us need first and foremost to affirm and defend the truth.

Francis Zammit Dimech is a Nationalist MP.