Former Labour prime minister Alfred Sant has suggested it "would have been better" if Byron Camilleri had stepped down as home affairs minister in the wake of the audacious AFM drugs heist.
The former prime minster weighed in on Thursday amid the political fallout from the robbery of more than 200 kg of cannabis from what should have been a secure army barracks in Safi on Saturday night.
"Home Affairs Minister Byron Camilleri did well to offer his resignation following the theft of cannabis from an Army depot," Sant wrote in his regular column for The Malta Independent. "Perhaps it would have been better had he resigned."
He reminded people that Labour had "made fun" of similar political moves when the Nationalist Party was in power.
"A politician in charge is responsible both for what he does and for what those who in his name exercise public service roles of a decisional and managerial nature do. If they mess up, he/she is equally involved," he added.
He questioned whether there had been an "excessive" increase in the last two decades "when almost any failure has been tolerated or ignored".
"The impact of such an approach is not evident in the short term but it then continues to grow, leading in the end to a significant relaxation of the seriousness, discipline and accountability that the public sector needs to maintain in order to carry out its duties properly," he said.
Sant was prime minister from 1996 to 1998 and was most recently an MEP until he decided not to contest the last European Parliament election.
Within hours of the illegal drugs theft, Camilleri suspended the commander of the armed forces and offered his own resignation.
But Abela repeatedly refused the resignation and Camilleri decided to stay on in post following a show of support from his cabinet of ministers on Tuesday.
“I insisted (on resigning) once, twice, and even more. But I appreciated the prime minister’s trust and that of the cabinet. Cabinet asked me to continue working and that’s what I will be doing,” Camilleri told Times of Malta.