Joseph Muscat and his Labour Party are morally and politically bankrupt. The responsibility for the current state of affairs rests primarily on Joseph Muscat’s shoulder as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party – hence his resignation.
However, the Cabinet and the Labour Party leadership are, together with Joseph Muscat, also collectively responsible for the ensuing mess.
They failed to act when they should have acted when the Panama Papers were published in 2016. At that point in time Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri should have been fired on the spot by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and thoroughly investigated by the police, together with the mercenaries at Nexia BT. Yet they were not.
At that point in time, the Labour Party was duty bound to censor its leadership for failing to act. Instead of doing so, it irresponsibly shored up the leadership and elected Konrad Mizzi with 96.6 per cent of available votes, endorsing him as Deputy Leader on the 26 February 2016, two days after the Panama Papers saw the light of day. He resigned some weeks later as a result of public pressure.
Why do they act in this way?
The answer was given in crystal clear language by former Labour Minister Leo Brincat when he was being vetted by the European Parliamentary Committee on Budgetary Control in 2016 with reference to his nomination to form part of the European Court of Auditors. I have already written about the matter in my article entitled: Leo Brincat: loyalties and lip service (TMIS 18 September 2016).
When Leo Brincat gave evidence, he was, as anticipated, quizzed regarding the Panama Papers. He made himself crystal clear by saying that he would have submitted his resignation – or else suspended himself from office until such time as matters had been clarified – had he himself been involved.
Brincat further volunteered the information that there had been a point at which he had considered resigning from Ministerial office due to the manner in which the Panama Papers scandal was handled in Malta. He added that eventually, however, his considerations did not materialise and he did not resign as he had no desire to be a “hero for a day and end up in the (political) wilderness” thereafter.
MEPs then focused on the fundamental issue: what about his vote against the motion of No Confidence in Minister Konrad Mizzi which was discussed by Malta’s House of Representatives? Brincat emphasised that he could not vote in favour of the No Confidence motion as he was bound by his Party’s Parliamentary Whip! He emphasised the fact that this was a basic standard of local politics, based on the Westminster model.
As a result of this exchange, Leo Brincat made it clear to the EU Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee that he had made a very important and fundamental choice: he preferred loyalty to the Party whip to loyalty to his principles: those same principles about which he has been harping on for ages. When push came to shove, solidarity with Konrad Mizzi took priority over adherence to the principles of good governance. This is what irked a substantial number of MEPs and prompted them not to recommend the approval of Leo Brincat as a member of the European Court of Auditors as they had done previously when faced with the nomination of Toni Abela. Leo’s declaration means only one thing: that his voluminous statements on good governance are only lip service to which there is no real commitment.
The same goes for Evarist Bartolo’s daily sermon on social media in respect of good governance. When push came to shove even Evarist and the rest of the Labour Party Parliamentary group (including Chris Fearne, current front-runner in the leadership elections), dumped their principles overboard to save their skin.
At the end of the day, the Labour Party – like the Nationalist Party before it – is not interested in good governance except as material for political speeches. Labour is morally and political bankrupt.
Carmel Cacopardo
Published in The Malta Independent – Sunday 29 December 2019
