As the mega scams are exposed, as they always will be, we are unsurprisingly treated to nonsense answers and non-sequiturs that defy reason.
Take the €400 million handed over to two companies over some six years for the building of new hospitals and refurbishment of existing ones. The courts have annulled the contracts entered into by a gang operating under the Labour flag with internationally known crooks, supposedly for our benefit, and declared them as being fraudulent and collusive, not only in performance but also in their conception.
And what does the prime minister tell us?
First, he blatantly asserts that included in that figure are the €188 million paid for wages of doctors and staff. The truth is that it does not. The auditor general report says so, black on white.
His second try is a complete distortion of reality, stating that Steward, in exchange for the annual payments received amounting to over €280 million on his own watch, actually “gave us a service”. In truth, the rats and the pigeons got more than we did.
The third attempt is that his government has taken Steward to international arbitration. This too is a twisting of the truth. Steward, in true collusive style, is blackmailing the political interests of its accomplices by making the referral motivated to expose the original Labour racketeering that took place between Pawley, Tumuluri and the Muscat team of Schembri, Mizzi and Cardona.
There is no honour among politicians, let alone among thieves.
The fourth bit of nonsense takes the cake. The prime minister comes out with the story that it was he who put a stop to the greatest heist in Maltese history with a timely “concept step in”, as if this has no connection to the fact that the courts had just, on the basis of solid evidence, put an end to this ongoing robbery. It was an outcome which the prime minister and his valiant attorney general spent five years in court trying to block.
Again, see how he has dealt with the benefits racket.
He first went into a silent prayer retreat when Times of Malta exposed the extent of this massive scandal. Three days later, waking from his sleep, he declared that no one in the Labour Party was involved and that he himself had referred the racket to the police back in late 2020.
Grixti was warned to remain quiet and not renew his party membership. This is Robert Abela
In panic mode, his ministers waffled along. The relevant minister for social services claimed he only got to know about it two years ago. Then, Minister Miriam Dalli said that she had just found out about it from the actual Times report days before.
Facing questions as to why the former Labour MP, Silvio Grixti had not yet been arrested and charged for allegedly, according to many witnesses, providing forged and fake certificates and aiding and abetting in the theft of millions in public funds, the lawyer with 20 years’ experience defending corrupt politicians and innocents alike told us that Grixti “had paid the political price”.
It was Fifty Shades of Joseph Muscat, where all his wrongdoings were paid for by resigning from politics, receiving terminal benefits worth millions and becoming a €15,000 a month consultant of birds and foreign interests with local connections.
In Grixti’s case, having “paid the price”, he too got three consultancy deals with none other but the OPM itself. But, even more importantly, he was warned to remain quiet and not to further renew his party membership.
This is Robert Abela.
He knows that his way of doing politics is all about appearances. Gone are the nerdy spectacles. His army of 70 persons of trust have a hotline to the PBS newsroom and, every day, the leading clip is a prime minister shaking hands with members of a grateful adoring citizenry that have been told that, within days of the next MEP elections, there will be a cheque in the mail.
The rest of the country’s major problems can simply wait.
Malta needs saving.