“I don’t see why Byron Camilleri should shoulder any responsibility,” Robert Abela declared with a straight face.
And that says it all.
Two-hundred-and-twenty-six kilos of cannabis were “stolen” from a high-security army barracks while under 24-hour guard and camera surveillance by the country’s armed forces. That stash of drugs, worth hundreds of thousands of euros, is now in the hands of criminals and probably already ruining more lives.
But Abela can’t see why Camilleri should go.
Even Camilleri himself sees it and offered his resignation. The minister understands how damaging this is. Even he knows that the army losing 226kg of illicit drugs from their secure facility makes an absolute mockery of the country’s security. But Abela doesn’t see it.
What’s new? He didn’t see it when prison inmates were dying like flies under Alex Dalli’s brutal regime. Abela didn’t see it when the ombudsman published a damning report chronicling the abuse under Dalli and the flagrant breaches of the law and prison regulations.
Neither did Abela see it when Minister Clint Camilleri paid his friend’s girlfriend €60,000 for a consultancy post she was entirely incompetent for and which she never did or hardly did.
Abela never sees anything.
Let’s get this straight. This wasn’t 200 grammes or even two kilos of a drug. This was 226kg – that’s sackloads of cannabis resin. There’s no way you’re going to slip out 226kg of cannabis in the sole of your shoe. The street value of that drug is more than most people will earn over two entire decades.
The implications are clear. One wonders whether that stash was taken out of the AFM’s barracks with the collaboration of insiders. That theft doesn’t just reveal an entirely incompetent AFM ‒ it raises serious suspicions of a deeply corrupt organisation. And that has become the standard under Labour.
There were allegations that former police commissioner Lawrence Cutajar passed inside information to the middleman in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination. Cutajar should have been investigated but his own police colleagues didn’t act.
And the former economics crime unit head, Ian Abdilla, was suspended after he “did hardly anything” about allegations of serious financial crimes by senior politicians.
Furthermore, just days ago, Abela’s friend, Christian Borg was acquitted of perjury after the police failed to even present the transcript of his alleged false testimony.
But for Abela, Byron Camilleri produced “five years of successes”. According to the prime minister, “the trust of our public in security shot up”, “the trust of our population in the police force is the highest it has ever been because the sense of security in our country has increased”.
What planet does this man live on? This is Abela’s pathetic justification for rejecting Camilleri’s offer to resign.
“I see no circumstance for which Minister Byron Camilleri should shoulder the responsibility for what happened,” Abela categorically declared. “What happened” is what usually tends to happen in Somalia or Sudan, not in European Union democracies.
Robert Abela just doesn’t see, can’t see, won’t see the deep-seated rot that surrounds him- Kevin Cassar
First, Abela insisted, Camilleri wasn’t the one who gave the order to store “the exhibit” at the AFM facility. “The exhibit” Abela was referring to was the massive haul of illicit drugs but he couldn’t even bring himself to say it. Abela thinks that calling 226kg of illicit drugs “the exhibit” minimises the enormity of the scandal.
For Abela, since Camilleri didn’t take the decision about the drugs himself, he can’t be blamed. The issue is not who decided where to store that cannabis but that the army miserably failed its assigned duty.
Camilleri is responsible for ensuring the country has a reliable, effective Armed Forces of Malta. Instead, what’s happened manifests the utter incompetence of the armed forces in the unbelievable disappearance of 226kg of drugs from under their nose. Camilleri is responsible for ensuring the AFM is fit for purpose. That 226kg drug heist confirms the AFM certainly isn’t.
Abela went further. He tried to deviate. He tried to pin the blame of Camilleri’s dismal repeated failures on others. “A decision was taken, maybe flawed, that a court exhibit is stored by the AFM,” Abela commented, “that decision is certainly not the responsibility of the politician.” Abela is trying to convince us the problem isn’t Byron, or the AFM, but the decision to task the AFM with securing that drugs haul.
Abela came up with an even more pathetic excuse for rejecting Camilleri’s resignation – the minister “worked in the immigration sector in these last five years and produced extraordinary results”. That’s like defending Mussolini because he made the trains run on time; or Hitler for building Germany’s autobahn.
“If it weren’t for the AFM, this country would have been invaded by irregular migrants,” Abela added. So, in Abela’s foggy mind, that exonerates them and their minister for losing 226kg of cannabis. That’s Abela’s ploy – deflect and deny. He’s setting up a ministerial inquiry “to establish the facts but also to see whether there were any administrative failures”. There’s a magisterial inquiry and a police investigation already ongoing but all Abela can do it set up a third inquiry.
Abela is the very man who, for months, insisted that setting up a public inquiry while a magisterial inquiry is ongoing would hinder justice. His police force didn’t even bother investigating the Vitals/Steward scam because they didn’t want to duplicate the work of the magisterial inquiry. But Abela is now ordering a third inquiry on the AFM missing drugs case. He has to pretend to be doing something.
We all know he’ll probably ignore their recommendations anyway. It will just be another expensive distraction exercise.
“He still has a lot to offer this country,” Abela commented about Camilleri, “I give him my full support.” Abela just doesn’t see, can’t see, won’t see the deep-seated rot that surrounds him. And that’s the greatest tragedy. If he doesn’t see the problems, how can he fix them?
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.