The shattering European Parliament report on Maltese politicians said to be implicated in acts of corruption really said nothing new, as our sister paper, The Sunday Times of Malta, noted yesterday. We had heard it in trickles that turned to a gush. But when put together and piled up to the point that it becomes overwhelming, it is, simply put, devastating for Labour in office.

It seems to concern a handful of powerful people who once usurped the Labour Party and now the country. They enjoy impunity and, apparently, think it can go on forever.

More than the report itself what was really shocking was the Prime Minister’s reaction.

He is the man responsible for the institutional breakdown in the country. He is responsible for the police corps’ negligence of duty, for the inertia of the Attorney General and, most of all, for keeping his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi in office. That is his unmaking.

The scandal of secret Panama companies set the ball rolling and has now grown into a landslide.

Joseph Muscat is responsible for all that because he has done nothing. Electoral success does not change anything. It will not come to a good end.

Dr Muscat’s claim that the MEPs drafted their report before they came to Malta is credible. The allegations were well known and the country ignores them at its own peril. The MEPs reaffirmed them and left unimpressed.

The names of Mr Schembri and Dr Mizzi appeared again and again in the report and the MEPs want them to go. To that, Dr Muscat gave a Mintoffian-style retort: “We take our decisions.”

Yes, but Malta joined the European Union to have someone to turn to when decisions made are wrong.

Yet, Dr Muscat could not resist adding his own spin to the report, a trademark becoming increasing stale. He claimed the Russian whistle-blower who made the allegations about the third secret Panama company, Egrant Inc, had said she was not the source of information and hence, there was no source at all. But that is not what Maria Efimova had said.

The report reads: “She indicated that she was not the original source who had provided information on Egrant to Ms Daphne Caruana Galizia.” The implication is that the murdered blogger had obtained the information from elsewhere and, as any journalist should do, had confirmed it with Ms Efimova. The Prime Minister denies that his wife is the ultimate beneficiary of Egrant. But now there appear to have been two people, at least, to claim that she is.

The European Parliament report makes several recommendations, none gratifying for the country. Yet, the report, aware of the political realities of this country, makes a fundamentally wrong assumption. The MEPs assume the Prime Minister would listen and act to reform the country’s institutions so they would finally move against his two closest associates. He can never do that now, the rot is too deep and his inaction for so long makes him equally complicit.

The only thing he can hope for is to drag on until he makes a triumphal exit from local politics, whenever that may be. His position weakens every day.

He may retire politically undefeated but the same cannot be said for the country he leaves behind.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial

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