In his article ‘What happens next’ (November 8), Martin Scicluna claims, perhaps rightly so, that Malta is not a Mafia State. He says that, in a Mafia State, it is the State itself that takes over cartels to control “networks”.

Now no one believes Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has the wish or the time to organise cartels to achieve his objectives. There is a more simple and just as efficacious means to control “networks”. It is enough to replace a no-nonsense police commissioner by a compliant party apparatchik who will await instructions from Castille whenever sensitive issues are concerned. A sort of a commissioner on call.

Yet, even Scicluna says that “the [Police] Commissioner has lost the confidence of the country and he must be replaced as soon as possible”. This the Prime Minister cannot do for at least two reasons.

The first is that he is already receiving a lot of flak for having five police commissioners under his watch. Appointing the sixth would raise more eyebrows.

The second reason is that the new police commissioner would surely adopt the recommendations made by the Financial Analysis Intelligence Unit. He would also investigate Pilatus Bank to find out whether documents (or clothes) were whisked away to Azerbaijan.

For these two reasons alone, the Prime Minister is unwilling to replace the Police Commissioner.

Nonetheless, we must continue in our efforts to persuade the Prime Minister that it is in the interest of all to do the obvious. It is a shame that all of us who ought to speak up and show our faces have left the brave women of Occupy Justice alone to face the Prime Minister.

It is an uphill battle dealing with a Prime Minister who believes the end justifies the means. If the ‘means’ for the Prime Minister to wriggle out of this controversy is for him to pretend there is no moral basis to remove the Police Commissioner then that, it seems, is what unfortunately he will conveniently pretend to believe.

The future does not bode well but we must persevere.

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