Last month, Louise Haigh resigned as transport secretary in the UK the day it became known that she had, 10 years ago, admitted to fraudulently misappropriating a ‘stolen’ work mobile phone by failing to declare that she had in fact relocated it.
In the Westminster system, cabinet members retain their seats in the House of Commons. It is the prerogative of a prime minister to choose who become ministers but his or her first duty is to maintain a government free of controversy.
The cardinal rule is that lawmakers cannot be lawbreakers. Unfortunately, both prime ministers Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela applied/apply the rule very selectively.
In 2016 came the Panama Papers scandal. At first, Muscat claimed that it was perfectly normal for his ministers to open secret offshore company bank accounts, as long as they owned up to it. Konrad Mizzi informed Muscat but failed to inform the taxman.
As for his chief of staff, Muscat argued that here was a successful businessman, and it was also normal for him to have opened one. Muscat’s only problem was the growing public assumption across the island that he too may have opened one.
Mizzi’s punishment was stepping down as deputy leader of the Labour Party, and of course paying the fine for his breach of the Income Tax Act. But he remained a minister. He was “indispensable” to government.
It took another three years of financial scams and the assassination of a journalist before this triangle of corruption finally resigned from cabinet life and politics. Meanwhile, the damage they caused to the Labour Party, let alone the country, was enormous.
Before Muscat left office, he prepared for himself a huge termination package, and a life working as a well-paid consultant for a Swiss company connected to the greatest scam deal of his administration. He also made sure his replacement shared his views on political accountability.
The day the standards commissioner found that ministers Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri breached ministerial ethics, and misspent public money by hiring Amanda Muscat for a job she was unqualified for and did not do, Abela insisted that an apology was sufficient to right the wrong.
No ministerial resignations. No money returned. No police investigation. Back to work everyone.
We might even see a reformed Konrad Mizzi return- Eddie Aquilina
As he has done many times before, he shifted his ground when public anger levels soared beyond his initial predictions. He said the decision was now in the hands of parliament’s Standards Committee.
Suddenly, the speaker, the committee chairperson with a casting vote, began to speak of a partial refund of the thousands involved. This added more weight to the perception of sleaze and the public became even angrier. And, what’s more, the polls were reflecting this.
Abela badly needed a miracle excuse to perform a U-turn and save himself by getting rid of Bartolo. It came in the form of a Times of Malta investigative
reporter who had just sent e-mails to Castille asking for confirmation about a new alleged €50,000 kickback scandal involving Bartolo and his wife.
Within hours, Abela announced that Bartolo was no longer a minister nor a Labour MP and would sit in parliament as an independent MP. Abela would not deny or confirm if there would be the usual termination payout. To this end, he refused to say whether this was a sacking or a resignation.
Abela’s erratic style of premiership has cost him a large amount of internal party support. Today, this has forced him to adopt a makeshift policy of rehabilitating former ministers or MPs who he himself may have fired for nepotism and other abuses of power similar to those carried out by Bartolo and Camilleri.
Rosianne Cutajar was welcomed back to Labour’s parliamentary group and now it looks like it’s time for Justyne Caruana to return to the Labour trough. “They paid the highest price,” the prime minister says, while clearly avoiding any mention of the restitution of our money. And Chris Cardona might “still have a lot to give”. We might even see a reformed Konrad Mizzi return in a few years. With Abela at the wheel, everything is possible.
As for Muscat, some say he can never return because he never really left.