The Dolphin and the Monkey is one of the lesser-known Aesop’s tales. A monkey was once shipwrecked and saved by a dolphin. While riding on the dolphin’s back, the monkey started lying and fibbing.
Finally, the dolphin could take the falsehoods no more; it dipped under water and let the monkey drown.
This story, unfortunately, is very topical.
When last week, corrupt Konrad Mizzi was kicked out of the Labour Party, the Prime Minister was asked whether Joseph Muscat – the man responsible for Mizzi’s actions from 2013 till 2019 – was next in line.
“No,” said Abela.
“Joseph Muscat’s case has nothing to do with Mizzi’s. The mistake Joseph Muscat made was that he did not take the decision to remove Mizzi at the opportune time. And for that he has paid the highest possible price,” he said.
Let’s pause on the word ‘mistake’ for a moment.
If Muscat had, indeed, fired Mizzi and Keith Schembri, in April of 2016 when the Panama Papers came out, then Daphne Caruana Galizia would not have been killed to be silenced.
It is, therefore, a ‘mistake’ that will haunt Muscat to his deathbed – he will forever be politically responsible for Daphne’s assassination.
But not just.
Because then he went on to make a second ‘mistake’. He stuck by his corrupt mates. He wanted to protect them so much that he even called a ridiculously early election – making it clear that if he won, then his chief of staff and his top minister would be automatically absolved of all sins.
He won, Daphne was killed, the country’s institutions were snuffed out, and bizarrely the Nationalist Party Opposition too decided to stop talking about corruption because, u le ta’, Malta was not a mafia state. Things almost looked bright for Muscat; why, he even kept on partying with Daphne’s suspected assassination mastermind.
But then, oopsie daisy, he made a third ‘mistake’. Like a snarling, red-faced, cornered Sphinx cat, he lashed out at anyone who after Daphne’s assassination dared cry foul. In fact, throughout 2018, independent journalists, civil society activists and a handful of principled politicians were made to feel that they belonged in a sanatorium.
Anyone who dared shout ‘Shame on you!’ was in some way or other submitted to public lynching courtesy of an army of government trolls.
In the process, because of his three ‘mistakes’ the country’s economy came to a standstill. Foreign companies started packing up. Malta got the red ink stamp of a corrupt country.
Even if, for a moment, we give Muscat the benefit of the doubt – maybe he truly had no idea what was going on pre-2016 – is it possible that he let himself be duped once, twice, thrice, and over and over by his best friends? Lie after lie, deal after deal?
If that were the case, he’d be a trophy-winning Ġaħan. Which he isn’t. This is not Chalie Borg who’s tricked by his pals into having to pay the bar round every time. This is the country’s very own prime minister.
Muscat was not tricked into denying or ridiculing every investigative report issued by The Daphne Project and reputable independent media.
Evidence was presented to him, time and time again, on a silver platter, and every time, he refuted it with a mouth twisted in a smug smirk.
The highest possible price, in this nightmare story was paid by Daphne not Muscat. She paid with her life- Kristina Chetcuti
Therefore, on the basis of these ‘mistakes’, Muscat is not only politically responsible for rife corruption in government but he was actively irresponsible or in collusion.
For this, he must be investigated and interrogated immediately.
Prime Minister Abela said that his predecessor had “paid the highest possible price”, in clear reference to the fact that Muscat had to give up his premiership.
Abela is wrong. The highest price to pay is not losing power. If you lose power because you’re upholding moral principles, for example, then that is the noblest price to pay. The highest possible price, in this nightmare story, was only paid by Daphne. She paid with her life for unearthing the corruption of Muscat’s government.
Muscat paid nothing – he is living the consequence of his rotten actions. His ultimate undoing was that he reckoned without the determination of citizens fighting for justice.
That today no respectable entity wants to touch him with a bargepole and he is virtually unemployable, is not a price. Like the monkey in Aesop’s tale, he is drowning in his own lies.
Let us never forget that. Especially, let Abela never forget that.
“If I were prime minister in 2016, I would have immediately fired Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri,” he told journalists. So why exactly did Abela vote in favour during a vote of confidence in Muscat last November if he knew he was in the wrong?
Now Abela has to decide. Will he follow in the footsteps of his predecessor?
Will he break the circle or will he keep protecting Muscat and his heinous ‘mistakes’?