Labour has been without a deputy prime minister for months. Chris Fearne resigned in May. He also withdrew his nomination for European commissioner in the hope that the court would exonerate him and he could pick up where he left, just in time to reclaim his consolation prize for being thwarted of the Labour leadership in 2020.
Well, the court slammed the door in Fearne’s face. The man who fooled the nation with his “real deal” nonsense will face a criminal trial. His fading hopes of still making it to Europe were quickly snuffed out.
That’s been weeks now. Still, Labour ploughed on without a deputy prime minister. Why? Maybe because Robert Abela prefers it that way. He’s probably far happier without a deputy, not having to divulge inside information to a potential rival.
Or maybe he’s looked around the cabinet table and admitted there’s nobody to choose from. So Abela keeps going on his luxury yacht escapades to Sicily and possibly further afar without appointing anybody in his stead. He won’t let go, won’t delegate. He just “leads” remotely.
But, finally, Abela will have to swallow the bullet and accept that a new deputy leader will have to be appointed. Abela will reluctantly have to adjust to the fact he’ll have a deputy nosing around. Labour’s delegates are once again called to vote in a one-horse race.
This won’t be an election, just a coronation. The last time delegates faced a deputy leader election, they were compelled to change the party statute and choose Konrad Mizzi.
Everybody in the party knew Mizzi was a terrible choice. But the overwhelming majority of party delegates voted for him anyway – because Joseph Muscat told them to. Even then, Mizzi was the only candidate.
Muscat made sure delegates were given no choice. He needed long-term insurance cover for his road map. Muscat needed somebody so deeply compromised that he would have no choice but to shield Muscat from prosecution. There couldn’t be a Muscat prosecution without a prosecution of Mizzi too.
Still, those Labour delegates could have abstained or simply stayed away to show their dissent. Instead, 95 per cent turned up and 96.5 per cent of those voted for Mizzi. Those delegates already knew about Mizzi’s secret Panama company and his New Zealand trust.
“The Panamanian company has no assets…. I will in time populate it with assets… I have nothing to apologise for,” he declared. Within two months Mizzi was forced to give up his post in disgrace. And Labour’s delegates had to go back to the drawing board.
Instead of kicking him out, Muscat protected him and appointed him a minister within the office of the prime minister. And kept him in charge of the nefarious Vitals deal.
The Labour delegates this time round were given a choice – Owen Bonnici, Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi or Chris Cardona. They chose Cardona.
That didn’t age well. Both Mizzi and Cardona were forced out by their new leader, Abela. Labour’s vote to kick Mizzi out of the parliamentary group was even higher than the vote to appoint him deputy leader. Seventy-one out of 73 voted to oust him. That’s 97 per cent.
But Mizzi was defiant: “I stand tall. I have no political responsibility to shoulder”. Well, Mizzi has more than just political responsibility to shoulder. He faces the most serious criminal charges – money laundering, fraud, conspiracy, accepting bribes and corruption in public office. Incidentally they’re the same crimes Muscat, who made Mizzi deputy leader, faces.
As for Cardona, he publicly threatened his adversaries he’d come after them with an axe. Slightly more worryingly, he was named in court in connection with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The self-confessed murder middleman, Melvin Theuma, claimed Cardona used a friend to pay one of the hitmen €350,000.
Labour never told us why they forced Chris Cardona out – but they did- Kevin Cassar
Cardona denies involvement in the journalist’s murder.
Labour never told us why they forced Cardona out – but they did. Maybe they realised there was something strange about Cardona’s dodgy Portomaso flat rental agreement. The €14,000 Cardona owed for the 10-month rental wasn’t to be paid in advance or every month. The whole lump sum would be due just five days before the rental agreement expired.
Both Mizzi and Cardona are pariahs nobody wants to touch with a barge pole. Even Labour must admit those choices were a catastrophic unmitigated disaster – and a lasting stain on the party. But Labour never learns.
Labour is now on course to repeat its errors. The delegates will be forced to accept Ian Borg as deputy leader and deputy prime minister.
This is a man condemned by the court for “lacking credibility”. Borg cheated a mentally ill elderly gentleman of his inheritance and then claimed, to the court’s incredulity, he was not aware that the man, a well-known figure in Borg’s village of Dingli, had mental health issues.
Borg went on to build a swimming pool on the land he coerced that gentleman to sell him for peanuts. That swimming pool is illegal, built on the basis of illegal permits approved by the Planning Authority that fell under his ministerial portfolio at the time.
Borg, the legislator and soon to be deputy prime minister, gave the court the middle finger.
He ignored the ruling and kept on frolicking in his pool. He clearly has no intention of demolishing his swimming pool to come in line with the court’s ruling.
The authorities have done nothing to enforce the court’s decision.
Borg communicated directly with his Transport Malta officials directing them to take care of specific candidates sitting their driving tests; but then claimed that he always advised Transport Malta to operate within the law. Borg hasn’t been investigated, prosecuted and convicted of corruption and trading in influence simply because we have a puppet for a police commissioner.
Labour has a decade-long crisis of leadership. Now that it has a fresh opportunity to elect an antidote to the rotten corruption, it chooses to crown as its deputy, not a man of outstanding integrity but somebody who the court declared cannot be believed, who retains his illegal swimming pool and who exploited a mentally ill man.
How long before Labour is forced to kick out its deputy leader, again?
Kevin Cassar is professor of surgery.