The saying ‘There is no honour among thieves’ is so very true. However, I find it also such a limited statement. In reality, there is no honour among assassins too. And there is also no honour among disgraced politicians, including those who are ready to sacrifice their dignity and self-respect in order to brown-nose that same disgraced politician when he was still in full power and adulated by the bootlickers.

The Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination aftermath is serving as a catalyst to bring out this lack of honour among the various thieves, crooks, criminals and politicians.

Keeping up with the various revelations coming out of the public inquiry and other court sittings is a gargantuan task. Certainly, however, these revelations prove that once one weak link in the whole set-up of crooks is exposed, bit by bit the whole lot start betraying each other and they all keep falling like a stack of dominoes, one by one. 

Just see what happened with the alleged assassins. They had not been arrested for long when one of the three, Vincent Muscat, ‘il-Koħħu’, started spilling the beans. He soon provided the police with the name of the intermediary, Melvin Theuma.

It took some time for the police to arrest Theuma.

With the investigation being carried out, among others, by a trio that went by the names of Cutajar, Valletta and Abdilla, in hindsight we now know that we could not expect much better. Whatever, when arrested, it took Theuma just a few minutes to betray his boss-alleged mandante-friend, Yorgen Fenech.

The crafty taxi driver had self-insured himself by recording his encounters with the Portomaso magnate all the times they met outside the Hilton, in the car, at the Żebbuġ ranch or wherever.

That was his guarantee to freedom, Melvin thought. Alas, as reality has proven, when one is not in peace with one’s conscience, it becomes extremely difficult to find serenity within or outside oneself.

Enter Yorgen on the crime scene. He also did not last long before he informed the authorities that he was ready to spill the beans on other alleged partners in crime. We now know that in November 2019, Yorgen had told his interrogators that – in exchange for freedom – he was willing to give them all the information on the role of the Macbridge owners and any involvement – remote or other – that Keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat might have had.

I forecast it will be Robert Abela himself who will give the final blow to Muscat by abandoning him to the investigators- Arnold Cassola

What Yorgen seems to have revealed is that already at the February 2019 Girgenti prime-ministerial birthday party, with champagne corks popping on the background of chants of “Viva l-Lejber”, Joseph Muscat already knew that Melvin Theuma had some compromising tape recordings. So much so that the then prime minister asked Yorgen if his faithful buddy Keith Schembri was mentioned in them. We await developments on this front.

On the COVID-19 front, we have all witnessed the volte-face on the part of minister Julia Farrugia Portelli. First, she was shamelessly bragging that she had all the mechanisms and protocols in place in the safest country of Europe, that goes by the name of Malta, and then she played the sandwich girl at Malta International Airport, with her placard inviting tourists to mass party in our country.

However, when the proverbial COVID shit hit the fan, she soon changed tack, by shoving the blame onto the trio made up of Robert Abela-Chris Fearne-Charmaine Gauci, since they are the ones who sign the legal notices. Abela went one further. First he blabbered that “the waves were in the sea” and “all is under control”. Then, when faced with the reality he had provoked, he fled to nearby Ragusa, accusing the Maltese people of being the cause of the disaster, not having obeyed Charmaine’s instructions. As they say in Ragusa: Vigliacco!

On the strictly political front, once his star started waning, the betrayal of Muscat by his hitherto faithful lackeys started in earnest. During his grilling in Brussels, Leo Brincat told the parliamentary committee that it was Muscat that forced him to vote for Konrad Mizzi because he was not given a free vote. Likewise, the moment that she no longer depended on her Maltese political master Muscat, Helena Dalli dumped him like a sack of rotten potatoes when she told her Brussels ‘grillers’ that, with regards to the Panama Papers, “No, I do not agree. I would have done things totally different”.

With Muscat no longer Labour leader, Evarist Bartolo revealed that he had spent seven years under Muscat subjected to the decisions of the “kitchen cabinet” made up of the trio Muscat-Schembri-Mizzi, while Edward Scicluna humiliated himself by stating he was just a figurehead finance minister since the kitchen cabinet and Projects Malta ignored him completely when taking decisions.

In October 2019 I had written that “Muscat needs to be in power, as he would have been had he replaced Donald Tusk as Council President. But now, if he lets go, the secrets he holds would be in danger of being revealed”.

His being called by the police for interrogation last week indeed shows that, little by little, Muscat’s secrets are being revealed.

I forecast that it will be Robert Abela himself who will give the final blow to Muscat by abandoning him to the investigators.

Unless, of course, Muscat has some information about Abela.

The future will let us know and definitely doesn’t look bleak.

Arnold Cassola is former secretary general of the European Green Party.