Anthony Manduca asked a number of opinion makers and former PN stalwarts for their views on the turmoil engulfing the Nationalist Party.
Questions asked
“Do you agree with Adrian Delia’s request for Simon Busuttil to suspend himself from the PN parliamentary group? What advice would you give the PN on how to overcome the turmoil that has engulfed it?”
Read: Egrant inquiry finds falsified signatures, differing testimonies and no proof
‘The PN finds itself between a rock and a hard place’
Louis Galea
Former PN Cabinet Minister
“It is no virtue for any PN leader to adopt such a stance in hours without having digested the whole Magistrate’s report. Considering party disciplinary consequences, if at all, should have been preceded by such an evaluation and followed proper party due process. The Egrant issue, however much it dominated the 2017 electoral campaign, is just a piece of a whole jigsaw.
The PN finds itself between a rock and a hard place as never before. It would be simplistic to think that the present predicament has its roots in recent events. Nor is it simply a clash of personalities, though this complicates the situation. One would need to take time to reflect and identify these roots, understand what is making our society tick, relate this to a genuine vision for the future, and properly re-launch the PN in the 21st century.
My pennyworth’s advice: cease fire, find the time and, especially, the right dose of humility and attitude as a precondition to grasp the complex issues involved, and go back to the drawing board to regain the trust of the people at large. Then, perhaps, positive results and success follow.
No party has a God-given right to exist in perpetuity. It can only continue to exist if its fundamental mission of public service is continuously renewed, owned by all, remains relevant, and communicated and delivered effectively in a way that meets the aspirations of the people, especially young and future generations, for the common good of the country and humanity.”
‘The PN turmoil is a direct result of the leadership’s choice of actions’
Andrew Borg Cardona
Lawyer and rule of law activist
“Most emphatically I do not agree with Adrian Delia’s request. There are so many reasons that I hesitate even to try to capture them all. Ranier Fsadni’s excellent opinion piece in the Times of Malta last Thursday hits most of the points, but I would add one which for me is cardinal: the way Busuttil was treated by Delia and by the leadership cadre of the PN smacks of self-interest to the point of disloyalty.
Virtually all of the leadership, though to be fair not Delia himself, who was a political nobody at the time, were completely and unequivocally with Simon Busuttil when he was doing his duty in the fight against corruption and impunity. There are many words to describe this sort of behaviour, none of which are complimentary.
The turmoil that has engulfed the PN is a direct result of the leadership’s choice of actions, as far as I am concerned. If the leadership wants to do its duty by the country, it needs to re-introduce the values of George Borg Olivier, Eddie Fenech Adami, Laurence Gonzi and Simon Busuttil, who all, together with their collaborators, gave the PN an identity with which I and people like me were comfortable.
Alternatively, they know what they can do.”
‘Hasty, unfair decision should be withdrawn’
Laurence Grech
Former editor, The Sunday Times of Malta
“The decision by Nationalist Party leader Adrian Delia, later backed unanimously by the party’s Administrative Council, to ask his predecessor Simon Busuttil to ‘suspend himself’ from the PN parliamentary group, stripping him of his good governance shadow portfolio, was hasty and unfair to say the least, not to mention its potentially disastrous consequences for the party’s very existence.
It came a few hours after Prime Minister Joseph Muscat called on Simon Busuttil to resign from Parliament after a magisterial inquiry concluded that Egrant, the secret Panama company, did not belong to the PM’s wife Michelle as alleged by the late Daphne Caruana Galizia, and that the documents apparently supporting this allegation had been fabricated.
In Muscat’s eyes, Busuttil should resign because he had embraced these allegations, holding them to be true. This is rich coming from Muscat, who failed to sack his minister, Konrad Mizzi, and his trusted chief of staff, Keith Schembri, when they were shown to have opened secret companies in Panama.
Yet Delia accepted Muscat’s reasoning blindly, as did the Administrative Council, while leaving many questions unanswered.
To begin with, if Busuttil erred in believing the allegations, so did many leading figures in the PN, including those now baying for his blood, so why single him out?
Besides, the inquiry did not answer the fundamental question, namely who really owned Egrant. Nor did it identify those who apparently forged the allegedly incriminating documents. Also, what we have so far are less than 50 pages of the 1,500-page report drawn up by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, which includes the testimonies of some 477 persons. (Delia did the right thing in asking for the entire report, and went to court to obtain it).
Finally, punishing Busuttil so drastically for an error of judgement – for this is what he was guilty of, after all – sends the very opposite message of what the PN professes to convey, namely that it will fight corruption without quarter. For if there was one person who made fighting corruption his crusade, it was precisely Simon Busuttil.
It was he who, after all, initiated three other magisterial inquiries into allegations of corruption involving Mizzi and Schembri, among others.
If the PN under Delia’s leadership is to save its skin, there is only one solution: the request for Busuttil to suspend himself should be withdrawn forthwith (after all, Delia himself had ignored the Administrative Council’s recommendation that he reconsider his candidacy for party leader last year).
The party should acknowledge that it had indeed made an error of judgment at the time regarding the identity of Egrant’s owner, with Busuttil himself admitting as much, but then go on to declare that it is determined to pursue its unremitting campaign against corruption.”
‘Delia had no real alternative’
Michael Falzon
Former PN Cabinet Minister
“There is no doubt that Simon Busuttil’s strategy as PN leader was to attack Joseph Muscat solely on the corruption issue. This was his choice. That strategy proved to be wrong. The PN’s electoral support decreased and Busuttil had to resign from party leader.
Now it turns out that the most serious allegation of all – the allegation that the Prime Minister’s wife was the ultimate beneficiary of Egrant – hinged on a document that is a forgery. It results that Busuttil recklessly took over the allegation, practically making it his own, without bothering to check its veracity in a judicious manner.
All through his time as PN leader, Busuttil consistently exhibited knee-jerk reactions throwing caution to the wind. His follow-up of the Egrant allegation was the mother of knee-jerk reactions. I have no doubt that Busuttil is honest but this is not an issue about his honesty but about his reckless rush to accuse his opponents without stopping and thinking.
Unless Adrain Delia took action for the PN to disassociate itself from the mess, the Egrant affair will remain a millstone round its neck. Delia chose to request Busuttil to suspend himself from the PN parliamentary group. This might seem harsh but, he had no real alternative.
The turmoil in the PN is a clash of personalities that has been brewing ever since the disastrous 2017 general election results. The Egrant inquiry conclusions exacerbated this personality clash. People must bury their pride and work under the current leader. Anything else would be playing into Muscat’s hands.”
‘The Egrant Report can never be taken in isolation’
Paul Borg Olivier
Former PN secretary general
“The Egrant Report can never be taken in isolation. Brian Tonna, sharing an office close to that of the Prime Minister in Castile, is the source hitting the side of the same triangular prism of corruption through which Egrant, Hearnville and Tillgate are refracted.
It is only within this larger context that Magistrate Aaron Bugeja’s conclusions should be interpreted, and it is within this same context that the decision taken by Adrian Delia and the Administrative Council to strip Simon Busuttil of his portfolio of good governance, demanding further his immediate suspension from the Parliamentary Group can be seen as rushed. The decision beats all sense of logic behind the expressed motivation to regain credibility on the issue of good governance and the fight against corruption.
Busuttil chose to keep his seat in Parliament. This is different to the decisions taken by the other three former leaders of the party who had, all in one way or another, fulfilled their missions in politics. Simon’s choice may be seen as a legitimate one. Following the electoral defeat, the fight against corruption was not just unfinished business but it became clearer that the fight had only just started against a well-oiled populist government that knows no limits in currying favours through political incumbency, no matter the price.
The Magistrate said “a hundred suspicions do not lead to one proof”. That may be a fair conclusion in the legal field. But in politics we are trained to go one step further, in that one suspicion of corruption is enough to make a legitimate fight against corruption. Cunningly, Joseph Muscat has shifted the spotlight of corruption to the dissected conclusions of the Bugeja report. Naively, Delia has followed in a similar narrative of credibility. Rather than defusing the bomb that Muscat threw on Busuttil, he detonated it within his party, weakening also fight against corruption.
The Egrant conclusions do not exonerate Muscat and his core from corruption claims. Credibility in fighting the cause for good governance can never be seen by sidelining a man who has honestly battled the cause, even if with past political misjudgements. A corrupt government can only be fought with a common rallying cry and with legitimate support to all those who, together, have made the fight their mission in the real interest of the country. Muscat may be gleaming with pride.
It is our duty to gleam with humility and reverse the call for suspension. Without that, Muscat is already getting ready to detonate another bomb on the party and on others.”