This month is no different from any other month. The alibis also hardly differ. But there are some new twists to an already twisted political language.

We were informed by the Labour Party whip, a former police officer, that once his prime minister and cabinet members “won the election by a large majority”, they were now exempt from their parliamentary duty to make their public declaration of assets and income. They then stealthily submitted their declaration of assets shortly before the budget speech in parliament on Monday.

Up next is the home affairs minister in charge of law and order, police and prisons. Following a recent report and subsequent in-depth investigation, the police decided to arraign the prisons director on serious criminal charges consisting of carrying weapons without a licence and threatening an ambulance driver with his life. He remains attending his office.

“It’s a personal incident,” says the minister, “nothing to do with his official duties” and “anyway,  I cannot suspend him as there is no one to take over in the meantime”. So, according to this precedent, any senior public officer, never mind the prisons director, accused in court by the police of serious crimes committed outside working hours would enjoy his full confidence until such time that the court says otherwise. He has abandoned ministerial responsibility at the gate of some future judicial resolution. 

Meanwhile, the PBS reporting reaches new depths in Goebbelisms. Its unavoidable report on MEPs passing a resolution in respect of the continuing enjoyment of impunity in respect of Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi just happened to leave out their actual names. To think that, only a few years ago, all we heard every evening ad nauseam was what was said or done by “Dottor Joseph Muscat, Prim Ministru u Mexxej tal-Partit Laburista”.

Robert Abela continues to SLAPP local journalists of The Shift with over 40 court appeals in an attempt to overturn or, at best, to delay the fruit of successful FOI requests – ironically, at the same time that he boasts about his anti-SLAPP “reforms bill” in parliament. If his other job was that of a comedian, it would make sense.

Nothing has changed much. His predecessor spent 1.5 million tax euros on an inquiry designed to confuse us about what he and his lawyer already knew. So, what’s so new about spending even more on covering up the corrupt use of public funds and Abela cronyism.

Meanwhile, the PBS reporting reaches new depths in Goebbelisms- Eddie Aquilina

Which leads us to the defence of “technical reasons” now being used to jump over the public procurement rules. Following upon the €30 million rent of offices contract for the Malta Business Registry offices in Żejtun and the shady Gozo Channel rental and refurbishment deal of the former supermarket offices at Mġarr, the MFSA has issued another €1.1 million rental expenditure by direct order.

It’s usual and expected that the government issues a tender first and then decides what is technically the best offer received. The way this alibi went meant that the landlords basically named their price and Bob became their uncle. Again, this is happening in the month that the administration has indicated that three public-owned sites are up for lease or outright sale to any private interested party. It is termed a “public/private investment”. One has a right to be asking why such properties are not first utilised for public requirements and also to ask whether the usual “success fees” or under-the-table arrangements apply.

That brings us to the Marsa flyover’s secret five per cent of value “success fee” agreed to between a business friend of the now nameless disgraced ex-politicians and the Turkish winner for the job. One million was to go into the now infamous 17 Black feeder company and the other million euros were to be kept onshore by a company that may or may not have started to engage certain local experts as ‘consultants’. How unfortunate for them that the winner went bankrupt before he was even half-finished.

The list of lines of defence is endless. Some have been hackneyed to death, those like “I have nothing to add to my previous (nonsense) answer”; “I got to know about it from the media”; “wait and let the courts decide”; “if you know anything go to the police with it”.

It’s refreshing to have these newer nonsense alibis shoved down our throats.