We do not need a cosmetic apology to humour us. We need justice. We demand the truth.
The Kidnapped Prime Minister is the title of a story written by Agatha Christie. The story recounts a British prime minister abducted while attending a peace conference in France.
Taking a leaf out of this detective story, is our prime minister a kidnapped prime minister, metaphorically speaking? Is he being held between a rock and a hard place? Is he his own man? Is he a captive of the everlasting emerging political sleaze, criminal allegations and dark revelations? Are the current cabinet members compromised and have they totally lost their moral standing? I dare to query further.
Has the Labour Party been hijacked by a number of obscure dons? Have they sucked out the party’s soul for their own hideous self-advancement, rendering it soulless in the process?
Has the Labour Party forged an alliance with dubious murky characters, confirming our fears of correlations between greedy businessmen, the criminal underworld and senior party officials?
Beyond the gloss, has the party lost its core ethos of being the voice of the vulnerable? Does today’s Labour Movement resemble more a massage parlour, massaging inflated egos, rather than being the voice of the left? Has the Labour Party turned into a safe haven for alleged villains, money launderers, unscrupulous developers, underworld criminals and opportunists?
In short, has the Labour Party stopped being Labour?
Truly, these are provocative questions. Nevertheless, whoever holds dear the value of democracy must urgently answer these questions and embark on a serious soul-searching exercise. It is in the interest of democratic Malta to have political parties free from any criminal affiliations or dominance.
Trying to avoid the message by discrediting the messenger or deflecting attention onto other issues will only reinforce the current dangerous status quo. One must take note of the urgency. Never ever before has the Office of the Prime Minister and the entire government been so overshadowed by accusations in which, directly or indirectly, the state has colluded with the underworld.
I am not alone in posing such uncomfortable questions.
Recently, a number of Labour loyalists expressed their grave apprehension. President Emeritus Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, a lifelong Labour stalwart, penned an opinion piece appealing to her party to apologise to the country and to the party’s supporters while requesting the party to carry out a serious ‘soulsearching’
exercise.
She wrote: “A soul-searching exercise is a necessity, even more so now, to clearly establish what Labour stands for today and whether it is a party that is simply power hungry and merely directed by surveys rather than by political, social and moral values. Those who have the party at heart need to ask: is it a party that is still faithful to its founding principles to support the workers, the poor and the vulnerable or is it a party simply mesmerised by any business that comes along?”
Sadly, as expected, the party’s reaction was lukewarm and condescending, typical of someone who feels buoyed by opinion polls numbers, with little awareness that what goes up must eventually someday come down!
According to the Labour deputy leader, the party has no problem in apologising and the actions of the “few” do not represent the party. Come again?
First, the underlined “few” were/are not the few party hotheaded diehards that, sadly, all political parties have to live with. These “few” were high-ranking senior party officials whom the party looked up to in admiration and awe. These few were policymakers, senior ministry officials, senior ministers, the chief of staff in the prime minister’s own secretariat and the former prime minister himself! Actually, these “few” ran the government of Malta and who other cabinet colleagues and other party officials supported, applauded or trolled whoever dared to criticise their golden boys.
Ironically, Robert Abela was not only senior consultant to Joseph Muscat and Co., attending all cabinet meetings and privy to all classified information, but when he had the opportunity to speak out, he defended them instead and undermined the person/s whose actions led to criminal charges against them, four years later.
Secondly, while an apology is recommendable, an apology without a contrite heart is as hollow as the party’s pre-election pledges of accountability, transparency and good governance have turned out to be. If the Labour Party wants to come clean, then it must be bold enough to not only dissociate itself from Muscat and Co. but also to expel them all together! It must cut ties with a number of fat cats and dismiss a number of CEOs.
It must also open public investigations to secure all major dealings and agreements made, in particular a number of mega development permits, Electrogas, the Montenegro wind farm and Vitals, among other shady dealings and, finally, reopen the Egrant investigation to identify the true beneficiary.
And, to assure Joe Citizen that the Labour Party is truly sorry, all sitting ministers who served under Muscat’s cabinet ought to hand in their resignation as a sign of collective responsibility. They must stop acting as the three monkeys.
We do not need a cosmetic apology to humour us. We need justice. We demand the truth.
Democratic Malta cannot have a hijacked political party, nor a kidnapped prime minister.
(This article was published on Times of Malta – 24 April, 2021)
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