The police commissioner must go
It has been said before that the police commissioner is either completely incompetent or that he is inextricably complicit in the government’s multiple attempts at subterfuge when it comes to the scandals it has been confronted with and which, in most democracies, would result in police investigations.
Either way, it has been argued, the commissioner is certainly not fit for purpose. That may have been true when it came to past controversies, but the events of Thursday night have showed beyond any doubt that he must go.
His incompetence and/or reluctance was underscored in no uncertain terms by his sheer inaction when it was very publicly alleged that documents proving illicit payments linked to the Prime Minister himself were being kept in a safe at a small bank in Ta’ Xbiex.
But instead of taking any sort of pre-emptive action such as, for example, sealing off the entrances and exits to the bank’s offices while he decides whether to investigate or request a magisterial inquiry into the matter, he continued to enjoy a fenkata in Mgarr.
While most of us enjoy a good fenkata from time to time, there is a time for work and there is a time culinary pleasures. Thursday night was certainly of the former category.
For while the commissioner was failing to take any pre-emptive action guess what
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happened? The bank’s chairman went to his offices, after the allegations about the documents and the safe had broken, and left the bank carrying two large pieces of luggage holding who knows what.
This is at the very least incompetence on a grand scale, and if the more sinister allegations doing the rounds turn out to be true he is guilty of far worse.
The Commissioner, at this stage, has to resign. He cannot be trusted in his position if he claims that the police cannot investigate allegations without any documentation, as was his excuse on Thursday night, only to turn around and do just that after the Prime Minister requested him to do so, and after the bank’s chairman left his offices luggage in hand.
The allegation that the Prime Minister's wife is involved in the third Panamanian company, Egrant, and that illicit payments were made to that company is the single-most potentially devastating allegation made against any government in Malta, yet the police commissioner at first claimed he is toothless and that the force is unable to look into the allegations without the still-to-be-published documentation.
But later that night the Prime Minister himself asked the Commissioner to take the claims to a duty magistrate, which entails an investigation and inquiry.
And in so doing he has admitted that the police respond to those in government, that the force is not autonomous, and that yes, he can investigate and request a magisterial inquiry without the documentation he had previously claimed he needed.
The Commissioner is no longer fit for purpose because while the allegations against the Prime Minister's wife, and by default against the Prime Minister himself, remain allegations and no more, the Commissioner’s failure to launch any sort of investigation until the bank’s safe had possibly been cleared of incriminating evidence constitutes a severe dereliction of his duty to the country.
It also shows that his duty to the Prime Minister is greater.
After that late night visit to the bank by the bank’s chairman, which was broadcast on national television, any investigation will now be called into question. As such, the Commissioner clearly must go.
Furthermore, for the country and its government to be taken seriously the Prime Minister should not have only sought a magisterial inquiry, which entails several days’ if not weeks’ work. What he should have done was to have convened Parliament with urgency in the wake of the allegations.
He obviously did not do that, but with hindsight there are surely a great many things related to the Panama Papers that the Prime Minister would do differently given a second chance.