Remember the unnamed Labour insiders who told The Sunday Times of Malta that the prime minister’s reluctance to sack Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri has ruined the budget’s feel-good factor? For once, Robert Abela is being unfairly criticised.
It’s delusional to think that the Amanda Muscat scandal is the result of a few bad apples and a prime minister reluctant to take action against two cabinet allies.
There is nothing here that we have not seen many times before. Someone close to a minister who gets a sinecure for which they’re unqualified or have no experience? Check. For a job that left no traces? Check. With fringe benefits that bust the rules? Check.
Muscat’s income was middling compared with some other ministers’ favourites. Exposed by the press, they brazened it out, just like Bartolo and Camilleri. Only one minister, Justyne Caruana, got the axe. She was an exception.
The commissioner for standards in public life has documented fraud that is the responsibility of more than two ministers. Abela says it doesn’t matter if Muscat was based at the tourism ministry, while ostensibly employed by the one for Gozo, because it’s one government after all. Well, then, we can point out that an entire government signed off on the fictitious employment, salary, rules-busting benefits and cover-up.
However, it’s disingenuous for the insiders to blame the prime minister for preventing Labour from becoming “a better version of itself”, as it had promised after the European Parliament election. Following the bad electoral results, one of the first acts of the entire Labour Party was to elect Ian Borg deputy leader and, consequently, deputy prime minister.
This is the man who blasphemed on TV and then insisted, with a straight face, that he’d said another word, so nonsensical it doesn’t exist. It’s he whose sworn testimony a magistrate declared was unbelievable.
He’s the same minister whose home sports a swimming pool that’s been declared illegal by a court presided by the chief justice. Silence from Borg, except for the splashes heard from his pool.
And it’s Borg, as transport minister, whose ministry and aides were found to be up to their eyeballs in a corrupt racket – where a massive system of patronage allowed incompetent, even dangerous, drivers to pass the licensing test.
Borg denies all wrongdoing. But a political party that wants to show it’s changing – for the better – wouldn’t start by promoting Borg.
So blaming Abela for disrupting Labour’s image makeover doesn’t cut it. Borg is the man championed by the entire parliamentary group. Promoting him shows that Labour has run out of potential senior reformers – at least while it’s in government.
Week by week, more voters realise this government cannot reform itself. It’s too far gone.
Today, a parliamentary committee will meet to discuss the standards commissioner’s report. It will pronounce whether, in the case of Bartolo and Muscat, love means never having to say you’re sorry. But whatever the committee decides will not change a single voter’s mind. Those minds are already made up.
Week by week, more voters realise this government cannot reform itself. It’s too far gone- Ranier Fsadni
The issue is no longer about what happened three years ago. Now, it’s about how the two ministers and their boss are behaving today.
Bartolo has only offered a non-apology. He can’t do otherwise. The minute he offers a genuine apology, he’d have to say what for. He’d be admitting to wrongdoing and face even stronger pressure to resign.
Camilleri has been worse. In defending himself, he’s turned the principles of good governance on their head.
He’s declared that a minister can’t be held responsible for the actions of the ministry’s employees. Really? Not if they’re persons of trust: the usual rules of public employment don’t apply to them precisely because the minister is taking personal responsibility for their behaviour.
The actions of a person of trust are a prime example of what a minister may be held responsible for. In denying this, Camilleri is asserting that he doesn’t have to answer to us.
It’s even worse than that. The commissioner’s report documents behaviour by one of Camilleri’s aides that beggars belief: it’s difficult to believe the testimony is true; but, if it is true, then it’s staggering that a ministry could be run like that.
Either way, Camilleri has given no indication he considers such behaviour scandalous in itself. An accountable minister would be indignant at the testimony. He’d promise to investigate it and root maladministration out.
Finally, we have the prime minister, whose version of the case was contradicted, under oath, by one of Camilleri’s aides. If Abela is telling the truth, the aide must have committed perjury. Is the prime minister taking action? He should be asked.
When, almost 10 years ago, the scandals first started breaking, people could still wonder if the accused were being wronged, or if the benefits of having them in office outweighed the costs to the purse. Today, few doubt the truth of each new scandal. There’s no question that the public is the victim.
Hence, why what we’re told – this week by Abela, Bartolo and Camilleri; next week, by someone else – is nonsense. The facts are so damning they can’t even offer a decent cover story. They just go through the motions. They know we know it’s nonsense.
But they can do no other. The truth would destroy them personally. The lies offer respite, while slowly poisoning their party and country. They choose self because that’s where their true loyalty is.