There is one big advantage to looking only at the future: you can act as if the past never existed, especially if explanations are being demanded about some issue that have the potential for embarrassment.
“All we are seeing is more spin. There’s nothing new. I will continue to focus on the future,” Prime Minister Robert Abela conveniently told journalists when asked to explain a 2018 property deal involving Christian Borg.
Borg faces kidnapping charges and police investigations on suspicion of money laundering and organised crime. Abela prefers to let bygones be bygones, beyond saying that “all taxes were paid” on the sale.
Evidently, he considers his earnings to be a ‘private’ matter, even if cabinet members are bound by the code of ethics to annually list their property holdings, bank deposits, investments and income for the previous year.
He was the only cabinet member last year who would not publicly declare in his annual asset filings what he had earned in 2020.
In his declaration for 2020, filed a month behind schedule, Abela noted that his income was “as per his tax returns” for the previous year, though no figures were given and no tax returns attached.
On the Borg deal, a spokesman said Abela had acted in his professional capacity as a lawyer to the person in question on civil matters and never carried out any business with him.
But the timeline of the deal naturally raises questions that any self-respecting politician, let alone a party leader and prime minister, should be rushing to explain.
On June 1, 2018, Abela – then a Labour backbencher and legal adviser to the prime minister – and his wife had a promise of sale over a plot of land in Żabbar partially transferred to them. That same day, the auto dealer now facing kidnapping charges saw the application he had filed eight months earlier to develop that piece of land being formally greenlighted by the planning watchdog.
A few months later, the Abelas sold their stake in the property to Borg, making a €45,000 profit.
On November 29, 2018, the auto dealer purchased the green plot for €315,000.
At the time, Abela was providing legal advice to both the Planning Authority and Borg.
That could have amounted to conflict of interest, in which case it would also be in breach of the Chamber of Advocates’ code of ethics.
Incidentally, the code bars an advocate from “deriving any personal benefit” from duties entrusted to him.
As his lawyer, Abela must have been privy to certain information about Borg, then still in his late 20s, and his considerable wealth. Yet, unlike the manager at HSBC Malta’s property disposals unit, who wondered how Borg could afford to muscle in on a €2 million hotel purchase “at such a young age”, Abela did not appear to have any qualms about proceeding with the deal.
His duties now go well beyond those of a lawyer and officer of the court. He is the prime minister and must not only lead by example but also lay himself bare to public scrutiny. This is what is expected of leaders in all democratic countries.
Yet, at this stage of the electoral campaign, he is constantly avoiding answering the awkward questions journalists are well within their right to ask.
At some point, he will have to come clean. Accusing Times of Malta of “spin” and of “colluding” with the Nationalist Party only serves to fuel suspicions of wrongdoing.