Our Constitution does not allow Cabinet to delegate to someone outside it the responsibility of deciding whether to recommend to the President immunity from prosecution to a criminal willing to turn State’s evidence.

Our standards in public life law expects that ministers do not take decisions affecting anyone close to them.

Joseph Muscat cannot obey both laws. Not when he has on his desk the decision on whether to grant immunity to witnesses in a murder that appears to everyone to have been perpetrated to cover up bribery and corruption potentially involving members of his government.

This is not a punishment. Even Prince Andrew had to withdraw from public life when he failed to give proper account of himself in a TV interview. And Prince Andrew was born into his job.

This is a republic and here anyone in public office is appointed on a temporary basis. We must always have a prime minister but it does not always have to be Joseph Muscat.

The retort that people have voted Muscat to power and only they should be able to remove him is mistaken. Most people in the country did not vote for Muscat. Most people voted for their favourite MP.

It is the majority of MPs that chooses the prime minister. It is their responsibility now to remove him.

Muscat is not merely conflicted as any prime minister entirely innocent of a crime committed by a minister of his would be in any case. Muscat’s conflict is not between his duties as a prime minister and his loyalties to his underlings Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi.

Muscat’s conflict is between his duties as a prime minister and the imperative instinct of his own political survival.

For three years we have understood in bits what this murder sought to hide. The first clear indication of wrongdoing was Daphne Caruana Galizia’s report that Schembri and Mizzi set up Panama companies and New Zealand trusts when they came to power. Muscat may have been forgiven for not dismissing them at the time when they forcefully denied wrongdoing.

But when the Panama Papers leak confirmed the story, Muscat hung his fate with those of Schembri and Mizzi.

He spent three years inescapably bound to them. Their roots have grown into each other. Cutting them loose now may be a belated recognition that if he had fired them three years ago, Caruana Galizia would be alive. But that is hardly enough for him to stay on at the helm.

The idea persists in some quarters that this is an argument for a political opportunity for the PN. It is only to scared Labourites that this is plausible in any way.

The Labour Party can easily afford to push aside Muscat, Mizzi and Schembri and form a new government

Muscat is right about one thing. Right now, in this time of profound crisis to the morality and ethics of our public affairs, the country needs leadership.

Going to some form of plebiscite now, in this polarised and frantic mood, is not merely undesirable. It is positively dangerous. Muscat is under siege. His supporters feel under siege. The hero worship in his defence has reached a pathological level. If Muscat were to call an election now, he’d win it. He’d consolidate his already unacceptably undiluted authority. He’d renew the argument that the people have spoken and therefore everyone else – the press, the Opposition, the institutions, even the police and the prosecutors and the judges – must bow their head to his supremacy.

The Labour Party cannot allow this. The Labour Party is not an extension of Muscat’s will. This is not Nuremberg, 1933. The Labour Party is an institution of the State with responsibilities beyond the narrow interests of Muscat or Schembri or Mizzi.

One of the responsibilities that fall on the Labour Party right now is to govern. But it also falls on the Labour Party to govern ethically, without a suggestion of conflict, without subservience to criminals that call themselves businessmen because they get others to push the triggers on small fishing boats while they cavort on luxury boats.

The famous erbgħin elf (40,000), the large majority the Labour Party obtained in 2017, should come in handy now. It’s not like Labour is governing by the skin of its teeth. They can easily afford to push aside Muscat, Mizzi and Schembri and form a new government. They can easily run a majority government that can start a proper clean-up.

What’s the alternative? Stay on. Continue to back Muscat as they did through the Panama scandal, the Egrant debacle, the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the 17 Black revelations and the identification of Yorgen Fenech.

Did this story get better since it was first revealed by Daphne in a teasing post with a picture of a white lamb and a discussion on what Mrs Mizzi was going to cook for Easter and if her husband would wear a Panama hat to dinner?

The story got worse and worse. And there is no doubt that everyone, everyone has understood where this truth is going. The controversy remains on whether Muscat still has the ability to cover up the truth, even truth he suspects and may not completely know for sure.

It looked like he could in 2016. Tactically speaking, he was certainly proved right by his electoral performance in 2017. And yet, the truth has continued to emerge and it keeps crawling, crawling closer and closer to the Prime Minister’s feet.

What happens if Yorgen Fenech asks for immunity or a reduced sentence to reveal what he knows about corruption including the involvement of Mizzi and Schembri? If the Prime Minister accepts to allow the immunity to be granted, the evidence will prove the Labour Party has provided us with a corrupt government for six years. Does the Labour Party think that’s a good thing?

And if the Prime Minister refuses to allow the immunity to be granted, it will look like he’s covering up evidence of corruption. Maybe worse. Is that a good outcome for the Labour Party?

Ladies and gentlemen of the Labour Party parliamentary group. Some of you, a few of you, entered politics because you wanted to make money. You were taken over by greed and you have allowed your avarice to take over your judgement.

The rest of you, most of you, have entered politics to make the country a better place for our children. For you, politics was meant to be a force for good. In your ambitions when you celebrated in March 2013 there was a sincere conviction that government is a force for good.

If you let circumstances continue to overtake you, you will not just bring your party to disrepute. You will bring Parliament, politics and government in and of itself in disrepute.

For generations, people will think that anyone who is in politics is in it for the money, like Mizzi and Schembri.

This is not just spoiling your party. This is ruining even the idea of public service for generations to come.

In your hands are the keys to stop this. No one else can. Get on with it.

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