Two shady matters surrounding Joseph Muscat’s stint as prime minister are the fact that in his first term he called an early election for no logical reason and, secondly, that he stood by his ex-chief of staff and ex-minister Konrad Mizzi notwithstanding the uncovering by Daphne Caruana Galizia of their secret companies in Panama, hidden behind trusts in New Zealand.
There is a narrative being weaved by all involved, who do not want the truth to emerge on Caruana Galizia’s brutal assassination, that such decisions were ‘mistakes’. No, they were not. They were willed, cold and calculated choices.
Just after the vote of confidence in the government in April 2016, outside parliament, then prime minister Muscat gave a press conference in which he stated that the vote of confidence was not an excuse for inaction and that he would be taking appropriate steps on the Panama Papers revelations.
He was, at that point, taking his colleagues in parliament and the whole Maltese nation for a ride. This was no mistake. It was a cold and calculated choice to keep the corrupt power-wielding machine he surrounded himself with well oiled.
To this day, Muscat has not uttered a single word of condemnation for the actions committed by Mizzi and Keith Schembri. He never dissociated himself from what they did. He uses the expired excuse of “let’s see what the inquiries conclude”.
Recently, on TVM’s L-Erbgħa fost il-Ġimgħa, Muscat brazenly stated that he never saw corruption. So why have the Labour Party booted Mizzi out? In the same interview he stated that Schembri was someone who takes decisions. One such decision which Schembri took was to give a government job to the middleman involved in Caruana Galizia’s murder. A phantom job to boot.
Muscat admitted that he is still on close personal terms with Schembri. On this basis, another narrative which needs to be debunked is that there was some form of betrayal by Muscat’s close aides. If that were the case, he
would not be on such friendly terms with them, neither would he give them MTA consultancy jobs.
When Muscat announced Schembri’s resignation, coincidentally the night before the ex-chief of staff was to be interrogated by the police, Jacob Borg from the Times of Malta asked the ex-prime minister whether it was his job to get rid of Schembri as soon as the Panama Papers were released. Muscat dodged his way out of this question by replying that “this is an opinion”.
Another baffling reaction from Muscat during the TVM interview was that when he was asked who the owner of Egrant is he did not name Brian Tonna and, instead, told the interviewer to address that question to the Pilatus Bank whistleblower.
It is worth recalling that Tonna declared during the Egrant magisterial inquiry that he was in possession of the sole share of the Panamanian company, Egrant. By not backing Tonna’s sworn claim to ownership, Muscat is implying that the true ownership is still unsolved.
To this day Joseph Muscat has not uttered a single word of condemnation for the actions committed by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri- Paul Radmilli
Muscat can brag till kingdom come that, under his watch, persons involved in the vile murder of Caruana Galizia have been arraigned. What the people of Malta expected of him as their prime minister was to ensure that such a murder never occurred in the first place and that he would not retain a right-hand man who was close to the self-confessed middle man and to one of the alleged plotters of the murder.
As to calling an early election in 2017, this was an issue that preoccupied Caruana Galizia. She wrote and said privately that there must have been some very serious reason for such a decision taken by Muscat. We now know from various court testimonies that the accused involved in her assassination discussed the issue of the early election before it was made public. Back then, Muscat still enjoyed a comfortable lead. Malta was in the midst of its first presidency of the European Union. A historic moment when Malta rose to the occasion to coordinate the EU’s six-month agenda and prove to the world that we are as capable as any other EU nation.
Yet, Muscat wasn’t even ready to wait till the end of June 2017 but found himself constrained to call an election on May 1. Instead of seeing through the crucial final two months of Malta’s EU presidency in which a number of briefs would have leaped ahead, Malta went into campaigning mode. Why? Intuitively, Caruana Galizia wrote o on May 4, 2017: “Ask that question [what triggered the snap election?] because it all hinges on the answer as to what Muscat is hiding from us now.”
As Simon Busuttil stated in that Xarabank debate prior to the election, it is because we know Muscat that we do not believe him. These words ring true three years later after Muscat has now left politics and wishes to sweep everything under the carpet, under the disguise of ‘a mistake’ and that history has to judge him, not present-day Malta.
There will not be true justice in Malta until the truth behind Muscat’s willed decisions to call an early election and to retain Schembri and Mizzi in power is uncovered. While we need to allow justice to run its course now that more honest people have taken on the roles occupied by previously spineless people, each one of us needs to make it clear that we do not believe that these actions were simple mistakes.
We know what lies behind Muscat’s mask and no talk of mistakes should ever convince us otherwise.
Paul Radmilli is a PN member of the Sliema local council.