Joseph Muscat will go down in history as one of Malta’s most effective prime ministers. He hit the ground running and implemented a number of major reforms in the first few years. The economy flourished and civil rights were boosted.
Muscat will also go down in history as the prime minister who allowed unbridled corruption and nepotism to go unchecked and his friends and lackeys to plunder the country.
The prime minister who was lauded for getting things done just stood idly as his chief of staff and star minister’s financial crimes were exposed in the Panama Papers. A journalist was killed on his watch and the details that have emerged since exposed a macabre plot to cover the tracks of the people who allegedly carried out the crime.
Deregulation corroded institutions and authorities like the Planning Authority and the Malta Financial Services Authority. Planning laws were relaxed and the country is being cemented over. Money became our god, “bureaucracy” our greatest enemy, the environment merely something to exploit.
Muscat noted obstacles to doing business but, rather than create transparent and streamlined processes, he conveniently sent veiled messages that cutting corners was part of our culture.
When the mountain of scandals exposed by the media reached a tipping point, forcing thousands to take to the streets, Muscat stepped down.
In comes Robert Abela, who was elected on the slogan of “continuity” – the message was clear that the new prime minister would follow on the road paved in gold by the hugely popular Muscat, who had won two elections by a landslide. It is almost an open secret that Muscat’s team threw its weight behind Abela, a former legal adviser, to ensure his election.
And this is why Abela is now caught between a rock and a hard place and would find it impossible to denounce Muscat, as Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech suggested in his parliamentary speech on Monday.
Grech’s call comes after the FATF’s decision to greylist Malta, which effectively puts us among the problematic jurisdictions when it comes to money laundering. The blame for this lies squarely with Muscat.
Credit should be given to Abela for making an effort towards implementing changes to improve the rule of law in the past year. He has introduced systems to try to weed out financial crimes, changed the process of appointment to the police and the judiciary and bolstered enforcement agencies.
But, as ADPD have noted, there remains the sense that these changes were implemented reluctantly and as a result of overseas pressure and not out of any sense of conviction.
Why does Abela remain so reluctant to condemn the disgraceful exchanges between government-appointed regulators and business moguls like Yorgen Fenech? Why is he reluctant to say whether Edward Scicluna’s role as Central Bank governor remains tenable? Why was Manuel Mallia, a former minister with a colourful history, appointed high commissioner to the UK, one of the most important diplomatic posts, just hours after the FATF highlighted our “strategic deficiencies”?
Abela is right to say Malta has an endemic problem of lax regulation but blaming the past for a problem that Labour has turned into an art form in the present day will only fool his blind party supporters.
With polls showing Abela heading towards another comfortable electoral victory, he has the luxury of taking decisive action to seriously distance himself from his predecessor. But he is unlikely to do this – Muscat has been elevated to god-like status and still enjoys massive support within the Labour core. And, sadly, history has taught us that few, if any, leaders in this country have had the political courage to publicly condemn the ills of their predecessors.