In the 2007 blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Davy Jones’s crew is damned to gradually transform into fish-like monsters because Jones breaks his vow and ignores his appointed task. Only when he is replaced by Will Turner do his crew become human again, with pieces of stinking fish flesh dropping off them as they stumble out of their nightmare at the end of the film.

This scene came to mind last week as Robert Abela and his cabinet colleagues took one unprecedented step after another to turn the governance of this country back to normality. What struck me most was not the resignation/firing of the police commissioner, or even the forced resignation of former Gozo Minister Justyne Caruana.

More indicative of the true intentions of the Abela government were the summary dismissals (sorry, resignations) of ex-OPM gollum Neville Gafa, Ministry of Education troll Anthony Degiovanni and Panama Papers star Adrian Hillman. Their blustering outrage is a classic example of an appalling sense of entitlement.

They could not believe that the party was over, that they were being pulled off the body politic they had been allowed to feast on simply by virtue of their personal and party loyalty to the Muscat government.

Some commentators have, predictably, already gone into paroxysms of jubilation at these first corrective actions. I am allergic to such reactions for two reasons.

Firstly, the whole point of good governance is that it does not rest on the fiat of ‘is-Salvatur’, but on the effective application of the rule of law.

The same commentators who have now joined the Abela conga line were, up to a few weeks ago, merrily bobbing in Muscat’s.

They did not publicly find fault in the positions that these and many hundreds of other similar individuals were given, how this was done, or their actions. If this clean-up is to mean anything, it needs to be done by empowered institutions that have the real autonomy and resources to do what needs to be done. Otherwise the fear is that Abela is just cleaning out one set of parasites to replace with his preferred species.

Secondly, what Abela and his team have started to do is simply picking off some of the more obviously unsightly maggots from the open wounds of our body politic.

The wounds are still there. The real test of Abela’s democratic and leadership credentials is the actions he will take to trim his own power in line with the Venice Commission recommendations. In his proposals for the police commissioner selection process Abela has shown that he is not (yet?) ready to bite this particular bullet.

I am willing to bet it is not what Abela’s supporters thought they would be getting

So, I am relieved that some of the pain has been lessened, in the same way that a woman is relieved that her violent partner has stopped punching her, as Manuel Delia said. But that is a long, long way off from there being a normal relationship of trust and respect.

However, there is a deeper level of transformation that is required. In another shocker, last week Chris Cardona was sufficiently shaken by events to say the truth: that Muscat’s government had “too much of a business mentality”.

This is not the same as being pro-business, not at all. To have a business mentality means to substitute the ethics of public governance with the practice of business success. A business mentality is fundamentally driven not by the common good but by the bottom line.

And in Muscatian politics the bottom line is power and wealth. All actions are legitimate to achieve and retain such power.

That is why Muscat and Schembri surrounded themselves with shady enablers, including in cabinet, who could act with total impunity so long as they followed orders unquestioningly.

That is why the Muscatian operating rules were: ‘You scratch my back and I scratch yours’; ‘Don’t rat on me and I’ll help you out’; ‘I’ll look the other way if you do me a favour’; ‘Get things done and to hell with the rules’; ‘Everyone has a price’; ‘The truth is what gets the biggest return’. And, of course: ‘Where’s my commission?’ That is how unscrupulous business operates. 

Abela’s Himalayan challenge is to undo all this damage and rebuild national and international trust in Malta’s institutions without denting his electability with his PL base. His solution up to now has been to turn the Muscat rhetorical formula inside out. Muscat talked like a statesman but acted like a partisan mafia don.

On the other hand, Abela before his election to PL leadership sounded more like a partisan bigot and a defender of Muscat’s fetid legacy. But that side of him has not been visible in this first week of prime-ministerial power.

Can we hope that the ‘old’ Abela was just using Labour-speak to bolster the myth of party unity and success? He has shown just what his ‘continuity’ mantra really means, both in the formulation of the new cabinet and in the first decisions taken by his ministers. I am willing to bet it is not what his supporters thought they would be getting.

If Abela turns out to have more than just his father’s surname, then I will be more than happy to eat my words. Let’s see how things develop. But Abela will get no honeymoon. The new CEO of Bank of Valletta made it crystal clear what the implications of Malta’s shattered credibility, of which we got another two painful confirmations, can be. The clock on Malta’s credibility and economic viability is ticking.

Muscat: the hope for Maltese football

Joseph Muscat, we are told, is interested is leading a hybrid Maltese-Italian football team to play in Italy’s Serie C. It will boost national pride, we are told. This is only right and proper; after all, who but Joseph Muscat best represents Malta’s national pride around the world?

But my little helpers have dug deeper and found the real story, for which the first is but a smokescreen. The real plan, it seems, is to make Muscat the MFA’s Football Promotion and Corruption Czar.

Muscat’s plan is the work of genius and clearly the fruit of his experience in government: to address corruption and boost the MFA’s finances at the same time.

The reasoning is simple. Let’s face it: corruption in football, like smoking pot and prostitution, is unsavoury but will never go away. So we might as well make hay while the sun shines: create a register of professional match-fixers, accompanied of course with a code of conduct. Then levy a 20 per cent charge on all income from match-fixing. The cash will go into an offshore account to avoid Maltese tax, and it will be called Football Gratuities for National Triumph. F-GraNT for short.

Imagine what the MFA can do with all that money for our youngsters. Imagine the sparkling new air-conditioned stadiums with cinema-style seating.  Destroy Malta’s football reputation and besmirch its integrity, you say? But the money, think of all the money!

And anyway, who cares what UEFA and FIFA think? If necessary we shall start our own MFA International Championship League with all our foreign workers; that way they will have something to alienate themselves with in the few hours when they are not being worked to the bone.

So, another win-win for Malta!

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