When Justyne Caruana stepped down as Gozo minister almost two years ago, she insisted she was “totally extraneous” to what had been reported and she had “no connection to the facts”. This time she is in it right up to her neck.
The “facts” then were that her former husband, ex-senior police officer Silvio Valletta, was very close with Yorgen Fenech, the man who was meant to be on his radar in connection with Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.
This time, it is Caruana’s friendship with former footballer Daniel Bogdanovic which has put her in the soup. The commissioner for standards in public life has found she abused her power as minister when she gave a €15,000 contract to Bogdanovic.
The commissioner noted that not only was Bogdanovic close to the minister and “manifestly incompetent” but also that the work he was being paid for had, in fact, been done by another person within the education ministry with the blessing of the minister.
The commissioner deems the matter to be so serious he asked the parliamentary standards committee to consider whether his findings should be forwarded to the police commissioner for further investigation regarding other individuals mentioned in the report.
Prime Minister Robert Abela should have given Caruana 24 hours to pack up and leave or chuck her out from both the cabinet and the Labour parliamentary group. Instead, he made it clear to reporters he preferred to sit on the fence.
“A high level of parliamentary debate,” President George Vella told his distinguished audience during the annual Republic Day investiture ceremony, “should remain a priority as well as the adoption and application of more rigid systems of transparency, ethics and accountability. This is the only way we can ensure that parliament receives the utmost respect, increases mutual respect between our parliamentarians and attracts citizens’ sound contributions by becoming more involved and engaged in politics”.
Politicians blatantly caught lying and currying favours to friends can hardly contribute to the standards the president desires.
The standards commissioner’s report into the Caruana abuse case is now in the public domain. The parliamentary committee decided to release it yesterday, with Labour MP Glenn Bedingfield remarking that large parts of it had already been made public.
Such reports are, of course, of public interest and should, therefore, be published forthwith once completed.
Their publication will not only name and shame erring politicians and expose wrongdoing but, more importantly, hopefully also serve as a deterrent.
We say ‘hopefully’ because some politicians appear to unashamedly continue adopting the antics that led to the prevailing culture of impunity.
Sadly, another culture seems to prevail in public life too: the culture of collusion and collaboration, which the public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s murder had also highlighted.
The standards commissioner found that, in her efforts to ‘reward’ Bogdanovic, Caruana was aided and abetted by her ministry’s top civil servant, Permanent Secretary Frank Fabri, and consultant Paul Debattista.
Fabri should have seen the ‘red lights’ when he was approached to make the necessary arrangements so Bogdanovic would be given a contract by direct order, the commissioner noted, adding the permanent secretary had also given a deceiving account of Bogdanovic’s duties as an employee of the community work scheme.
Debattista had wrongly testified before the commissioner that nobody had assisted Bogdanovic in the compilation of a report on the national sport school when it had been the consultant himself who drew up the document and the minister was aware of this.
Lies, in any form or manner, cannot and should never be tolerated in public life.