Life is like that. Keith Schembri was Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff, an emulation of Tony Blair’s Alistair Campbell. Everything went through him; he was an electoral strategist, and as he himself boasts, the mastermind behind Labour’s electoral victories. And yet in the hour of need, few did not distance themselves from him. All of a sudden no one remembers having published photos taken with this man who like Scarpia in Tosca “davanti a lui tremava tutta Roma”.

Labour is playing a stupid, even if convenient, game. Through the prime minister  it is proclaiming that it is proud of its “achievements” in the past eight years, but conveniently does not shoulder its political responsibility  for the incidents, events and arraignments, occurring during the same period, which have tarnished the reputation of our country. The prime minister has also reminded us that Joseph Muscat is no longer part of government!  Instead, government indulges in an attack on the opposition. As if those who reveal the squalid details of this government are the culprits!

I am old enough to remember that in the final days of the Labour government in 1987, when the then Leader of the Opposition Eddie Fenech Adami was addressing the House  on the terrible events which had led to the suppression of the  freedom of assembly  at Żejtun and the murder of Raymond Caruana, amid interruptions not only from the government  benches  but also from people in the Strangers’ Gallery, the Speaker,  rather than  maintaining  order and expelling  the culprits, turned to Fenech Adami and appealed to him to be “moderate” in his remarks!

You see, it is not the fault of those who stacked millions abroad in fiscal paradises, who transacted illegal business between them, who laundered their money, it is the fault of those who discovered and revealed these crimes!

No apologies have been forthcoming from Labour

In May 2016, a motion was debated  in the House  for a parliamentary  inquiry to be held  to examine and investigate the actions of the chief of staff of the then prime minister  in the light of the revelations of the Panama Papers. All Labour MPs and ministers of today, who were MPs then, voted against the holding of such inquiry. Indeed, they sat as they listened to the then prime minister’s concluding speech and applauded his remark, and I quote:

“I shall tell you what I and Keith Schembri succeeded in doing; we crushed the 25-year-old Nationalist monopoly on power. For that, you never forgave him!”

Not one Labour MP begged to differ.

In this time of Holy Week, watching the betrayal of those who only a few months ago grovelled in Schembri’s presence, one inevitably hears the cock crowing once again. One Labour MP,  on being faced with a  bootlicking eulogy of Schembri which he had published, rushed to the press to clarify that he only wrote that two years ago; little did he realise that at that time, the Panama Papers scandal had been revealed and was the talk of the town, and a magisterial inquiry had already started on Schembri’s activities!

The other mantra which is being repeated ad nauseam by any Labour MP entering parliament when asked any question on this matter is that “the institutions are working”. Nothing is further from the truth. In spite of the police having in their possession detailed information about the iniquities committed by people in the highest echelons of government, they did nothing. It was only thanks to the “empty” boxes which Simon Busuttil presented in court, among the derision and jeers of the prime minister  and the Labour media, that after three years of waiting,  the magisterial inquiry was concluded and persons arraigned in court.

What is even more bizarre is the narrative repeated by Labour’s spin doctors   namely that “all this took place under a Nationalist administration”. It still baffles me how the police at that time could have known of alleged bribery done in private between a private entity and a commercial  company owned by the future chief of staff of a future prime minister; such crimes were revealed only during a Labour administration thanks to the Panama Papers and the indefatigable work of Daphne Caruana Galizia, who for that  paid the highest price . 

No apologies have been forthcoming from Labour. Just convenient distancing. A political and convenient distancing rather than a social one.

Tonio Borg, Former European Commissioner