Within the Labour Party, playing for time is the way it deals with all the sleazy scandals of its administration, the fruit of its impunity, executed by its public- funded army of loyalist lackeys. Time heals all wounds, they do say.
Little wonder therefore that Robert Abela found it in his lawyer’s heart to jump to the aid of his European socialist counterparts who had just been caught by the Belgian police hoarding huge amounts of cash in hotel rooms only a few days ago. He expressed his legally-based concern that Roberta Metsola and the whole European Parliament in its near unanimous vote in sacking a vice president was “too quick” a reaction.
He wants us to believe that politicians owe no accountability to the people who have elected them. They can do what they like, smell as bad as you like and, yet, they can stay put until and if the matter ends up in court and unresolved in a long drawn out judicial process in the fumbling hands of an incompetent attorney general.
Labour’s lack of any proper standard of political responsibility is now endemic. In fact, you cannot blame Abela for the shock he must have felt when he saw it being applied so fast. For Labour, abuse of power is fine. It is actually encouraged if it brings in the money and buys up the votes.
Remember April 2016 when the whole country, including Castille’s legal advisers, found out about the Panama companies and we all waited for the resignations? None came. Maybe it was “too soon”. Instead we saw a pious prime minister defending his two shady cabinet appointees and extending to them further time to continue with their crooked plans while destroying what evidence they could in the meantime.
Then we found out through a leaked Karl Cini e-mail of their plan to deposit annually in secret no less than four million dollars from a recycling business to be set up on the planet Pluto. Again, Joseph Muscat and his legal advisers stared at the ceiling and failed to act. They obviously thought it was still “too soon” to throw out the garbage.
Muscat’s strange and unexplainable benevolence towards Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi showed him as the best guess for wearing the shoes of Egrant. True to his wit and style, he got his lawyers to draft and request a useless time-wasting magisterial inquiry to delay, to divert and to make sure that no one would find out who the real owner of Egrant was. It was €1.7 million well spent.
As the country called out for action, Muscat and his legal team told us to wait “out of respect for the institutions” and that “we cannot prejudice ongoing investigations”.
For Labour, abuse of power is fine- Eddie Aquilina
Today, one of those legal advisers, now a prime minister of an EU member nation, basically rubbished what a 99.9 per cent vote of the European Parliament did in applying the time-honoured democratic principles of political responsibility.
If Eva Kaili or her connections have a legal defence for being in possession of large unexplained cash, then a court in the future may decide to acquit her but, for now, she owes her colleagues and the public a duty to step down and, if not, to get sacked. After all, former minister Manwel Mallia never had any trouble explaining half a million euros in cash stuffed under his bed boards.
But Abela works differently. He knows that, in time, people tend to forget.
When a minister starts to smell more than the Birżebbuġa fish stench, Bobby fixes it by returning the delinquent to the back bench, giving him or her a comfortable get-by €60,000 a year ‘consultancy’ job with some other ministry and, after a short passage of time, he or she is returned, squeaky clean, back into cabinet.
If she or he is then stupid enough to get caught again funnelling public funds to a new friend under a fake contract, then it's game over. Being stupid enough to get caught twice in a row within 12 months is unforgivable.
Abela just did with Justyne Caruana what Metsola did with Kaili. The big difference is the length of time that Abela took to do the right thing. And he only sacked her for making him look as reckless and dishonest as she was.
You might say that Roberta is tops. But I always choose Robert over Roberta because, just like the song in that Bond movie, I know that “No Bobby Does it Better”.