As Malta approaches another election, do we all think the world is watching? We probably do but, unfortunately for us normal and peace-loving, law-abiding and democracy-loving citizens, it just does not care. So we have to slog it out on our own inside our greylisting curtain and under a proven anti-rule of law administration.
Having now tasted an extended period of eight years under Labour for a second time since Independence, we should have realised by now that the leopard never loses its spots.
What had been sold to us by that infamous slippery eel, Joseph Muscat, as a change of our society into one that would be based on meritocracy, accountability and transparency, has been proven to be a bluff. What we got instead was a den of corruption led by that now publicly acknowledged kitchen cabinet of the few ‘ta’ ġewwa’.
We had secrecy in all transactions like Electrogas and Vitals pillaging our national treasures or those connected with kickbacks in the form of Panama companies set up as channels for 17 Black and Macbridge to pay into. And more and more consultancy agreements with obscure companies set up even before the 2013 election or with third countries being used as intermediaries or by banks like Pilatus and others that are still around.
A grey curtain was drawn around most transactions that the kitchen cabinet, with Keith Schembri in Castille, were involved in. So many contracts with persons of trust have been entered into, some we know of but many others still to be revealed, whereby our taxes and income from the anti-European sales of golden passports to oligarchs, dictators and blood-money families from Africa and Asia seeking a haven behind the grey curtain continue to be pillaged.
So many party activists and friends of Muscat in those video-filmed orgy-like drunken singing parties in Girgenti and others who are more invisible and discreet have benefitted illegally from these secret deals and contracts.
Also, behind the grey curtain we find the misuse of our taxes and of EU funds, from the taxes of our gullible European brothers and sisters in the EU. The constant grants of contracts for public works without proper public tenders for friends of the party or party financiers. These have been allowed over the years to avoid or delay paying their taxes or VAT, thus using public money to manage their cash flow. This is a double crime since they benefit from fixed deals, run their cash flow on our taxes and then, to compound it , use illegal untrained workers paying below the minimum wage in slave-labour employment while not following rules of health and safety.
These years behind the grey curtain have really drilled under the very foundations of our society and damaged our democracy. This is just the tip of the iceberg that I can cover in this space-limited article but it really is already enough for us all to say enough is enough.
A grey curtain was drawn around most transactions that the kitchen cabinet were involved in- John Vassallo
The latest leak, probably from inside the Labour Party, concerns the €17,000 contract that Joseph Muscat gave Robert Abela. Abela was inside the kitchen cabinet at the time as legal adviser to the prime minister. He would later be anointed by the disgraced Muscat to be his successor. Abela could, thus, afford his ship and his trips to Sicily before he became prime minister.
Had he justified his high salary by doing his job as a lawyer to keep the cabinet faithful to the law and the constitution and to ensure that the Lands Department and the Planning Authority did not succumb to breaking the law as they did, then, maybe, one could accept this high salary. But he did the opposite. It is clear that everyone, including Labour voters, are very unhappy.
Abela was chosen to keep up the continuity after Muscat but two things forced him to alter course to try to rein in the worst offences.
The first was the public inquiry into the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The judges did not fear the orders by Abela not to proceed with their inquiry to its logical end and they did just that; finding that the cause for the murder of Daphne lay with the Muscat cabinet that had allowed a state of impunity to reign. Abela formed part of that cabinet and has the same guilt of Muscat and the entire cabinet.
Then we had the greylisting decision of the FATF under which Malta is still suffering. When the chair of the MFSA informs us that not so many operators in our financial services sector have rushed to leave Malta when it was greylisted he is just confirming that the operators who came to Malta to benefit from our money laundering tax haven, that we call financial services sector, were here because they wanted to hide their wealth.
These will not leave a greylisted country because no proper financial centre worthy of its name would accept them to operate there. By staying here these just confirm how much of a tax haven and money laundering centre Labour turned Malta into.
Following these two events, Abela and the police had to do something. So, they raided Muscat’s house, something they should have done long ago, and they pushed the MFSA to issue a certain number of fines. They also made life much more difficult for normal citizens going to their bank and notaries performing deeds of sale.
Because they attacked or, at least, challenged Muscat, the Labour movement now begins to show serious cracks.
We, the others outside these circles, can only observe from the outside and hope that, just as the Mintoff period of violence, corruption and overreach came to end through internal combustion, we may be seeing clear signs of a similar change of air now.
And, as we all sighed a sigh of relief and said “Għall -Erwieħ” and enjoyed a relative long period of comfort, even joining the EU in the meantime, we may be getting closer to a similar moment of truth once more.
The leopard never changes its skin and enough is enough.