From what Daphne Caruana Galizia had told her readers about Robert Abela, we knew he had some nerve. But boy is he taking that nerve to new heights!

He is bending over backwards trying to distance himself from a corrupt gang that hijacked this country, while he is nothing but the product of that same gang, being first planted as the cabinet’s legal adviser and then pushed to become its leader. Wasn’t it the same Abela all squeezed up between the man-behind-Invictus and Invictus himself at each cabinet meeting?

Does he want us to forget the years he spent providing legal counsel to Joseph Muscat, as Invictus was elbowing Sassou Nguesso of Congo to the title of most corrupt man of the year? Robert Abela is part and parcel of the plan that Keith Schembri and Co put together for Joseph Muscat. That scheme is chained around Abela’s ankle like a house-arrest bracelet. He can run, but it will follow. And he knows it – that’s why the panic.

And the country knows it too. Just like it knows that what we are witnessing is nothing but the tip of an iceberg. The house of cards is in free fall. The octopus of corruption has got its tentacles tightly wrapped all around them – from the sleaziest of the lot to the holier-than-thou fence-sitters whose cowardly silence made it all possible. I see them in parliament, looking silently and pretending this too shall pass. It won’t. And to those of them reading this, shame on you – you’ve flushed your honour down the drain to keep your honoraria.

The incredible events this country is witnessing are simply unprecedented. Many had to pinch themselves seeing those minivans full of exhausted rats entering Corradino. But luckily for this country, there have been those who believed that the arc of the moral universe, while long, always bends towards justice. Those who knew all along that the truth would ultimately prevail but for it to happen, it needed all their perseverance, their resistance, their bravery.

History will be kind to them: from those who have been gathering each month to mark the darkest day in our country’s modern history, to the man who was ridiculed for presenting in court those supposedly empty box files. And to those in sensitive positions who, despite all the unimaginable pressure from above, still ploughed through, keeping their integrity intact.

Labour’s unravelling is Malta’s chance to start afresh

A visibly shaken Robert Abela told us that the seismic waves the county is witnessing are nothing but a sign that the institutions are working. If anything, they are a sign that the institutional system – that same system he was duty bound to guard in his role as legal counsel to the cabinet of ministers – spectacularly collapsed. 

I asked the prime minister recently to tell us the price this country will have to pay for the disaster he is overseeing. What’s the price of a ruined reputation? What investment flows are being turned away? How much do we and our children have to pay for the mess he helped enable? Seeing a sulky Robert Abela repeatedly failing to assume responsibility for the state the country is in, beggars belief. No one begged you to lead this country, Mr Prime Minister. The buck stops with you. 

They promised us a ġenerazzjoni rebbieħa and are leaving behind a ġenerazzjoni mibluha. They pledged to make Malta the best in Europe and instead, pushed our country to the brink of an abyss.

But we can pull it back.

Labour’s unravelling is Malta’s chance to start afresh. An opportunity for those with Malta truly at heart to start rebuilding an institutional system that would ensure that what we are witnessing would never be allowed to happen again.

But let’s be clear. For this country to start afresh, we must leave no stone unturned. We must equip all our authorities with all that is needed to go through each and every deal secured by Labour in government: from Electrogas and the corrupt sell-off of our hospitals, to every kickback, shady direct order and dishonest appointment that fattened the pockets of the few.

We need to understand and expose the role played by pivotal people in all of our authorities, whose responsibility was to avoid this corruption from happening: from the police to the Office of the Attorney General, from the Financial Intelligence Unit to the country’s financial services regulator. Not one stone unturned. Not one lead abandoned.

Above all, we need full accountability and for the heavy hand of justice to come crashing down on all those who betrayed this country. The only person who has paid a price so far is the one who sought to expose the truth. The time must come for justice to take its full course, and that time cannot come with Robert Abela as prime minister of this country.

Chris Said, Nationalist Party spokesperson for Gozo

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