Rosianne Cutajar’s phone chats, published by the ex- Labour delegate and ex-National Book Council chairperson Mark Camilleri, would certainly top readers statistics in the last few weeks.
Camilleri is the editor whom the Labour Party had extolled when he had published a sexually explicit and crude short story in a university newspaper in 2010. Labour then posed against censorship.
Thirteen years later, Labour is now censuring its own former delegate, abusing a law which, obviously, goes against the fundamental right of defence in a court of law.
Camilleri had in his possession documents that he, no doubt, considered as exonerating proof in the libel case Cutajar brought against him. Someone tried to destroy that ‘exonerating proof’. How can Camilleri be barred from publishing documents which could prove the libel case was utter fabrication?
The Cutajar saga is one of Robert Abela’s comedy of errors.
Abela’s number one error was to make her a parliamentary secretary as soon as he became prime minister.
Joseph Muscat, ‘Person of the Year’ for organised crime and corruption, had resisted elevating Cutajar; Abela didn’t.
His serious error of judgement led to her resignation after she was found out to be acting as a property go-between with her main canvasser while an MP and not declaring her income.
Abela’s second error was to let her stand again in the last general election. You don’t need to be a genius to conclude that he knew Cutajar knew too much and he acted accordingly.
Any self-respecting leader would get rid of someone like Cutajar at the first opportunity. Abela did not.
Error number three for Abela was the defence of his MP, saying “she has already paid the price”. Then, in a matter of days, when everyone could see through it, he flip-flopped and said “no one is bigger than the party”.
Error number four: Abela continued to prove what passes as ethics in Malta; do what you like but if you get caught and it starts harming Labour, you just pay the measly price of resignation.
And then, after a few weeks, contracts and consultancies come your way so you can keep pigging out.
The police should have been roped in to investigate the legality of a Labour MP receiving money and gifts from the owner of 17 Black.
She spoke in his favour in the Maltese parliament and at the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe.
The police need to investigate what means Cutajar used to advance her political career and whether those means were legal or not.
This included creating fictitious jobs so she could pig out, like all the stars in the Labour firmament.
This is what would happen were we living in a normal country. But instead, the police commissioner has gone AWOL.
The police commissioner knows that bribery is illegal and can come in the form of ‘gifts’.
He understands what ‘trading in influence’ means.
He knows fictitious jobs are a crime (ask Keith Schembri and Melvin Theuma).
It cannot escape the police commissioner that Cutajar could have been tempted to lie under oath the minute she lodged her libel suit.
However, faced with the criminality that pervades almost all of our institutions, the police commissioner acted weak in Abela’s comedy of errors.