If the PM is serious about corruption he needs to show it
If the Prime Minister is serious about the corruption allegations he and his government are facing, then he should do something about it.
It is true that the Prime Minister himself saw to it that a magisterial inquiry was launched into the allegations concerning himself and his wife. It is also true that that inquiry is an open-ended one in that it is not confined by any specific terms of reference. This, however, is not enough. With the general election the country is facing in just under a month’s time having been called precisely because of these and related grievous allegations of corruption, shouldn’t the Prime Minister, even to safeguard his own reputation, show that he will give no quarter to any perceptions of corruption under his watch?
Does the Prime Minister believe that he can continue to remain passive when such large swathes of the country he leads have been driven to outrage over the last two weeks?
Will the dishing out of tax rebate cheques, promising to repave the country’s roads and to give workers more public holidays offset the long shadow of corruption that has been cast over his governance of the country?
The Prime Minister may hide behind the ongoing magisterial inquiry and use that inquiry as a waiver from taking any concrete action on these allegations. But the fact of the matter is that there are things that could be done if the Prime Minister wishes to at least partially cleanse the government of some of the mud that it has fallen into.
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Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, he missed his shot at doing the right thing straight off the bat early last year when it was confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt, and then admitted, that his energy minister Konrad Mizzi and his chief of staff Keith Schembri had set up secret companies in Panama and trusts in New Zealand in the immediate wake of general election 2013. However innocuous those moves may have been, they were highly suspicious and still stink to this very day. The Prime Minister should have cut both of them loose there and then if only on account of the negative perception and shadow of doubt that their actions cast on his government.
Instead, the Prime Minister ‘chastised’ Dr Mizzi by having him step down from the Labour Party’s deputy leadership, which matters little as far as the running of the country is concerned, and by ‘demoting’ him from energy minister to minister without portfolio within the Office of the Prime Minister, where he is doing more or less exactly the same job but with a different title.
Mr Schembri, meanwhile, remained completely untouched with the Prime Minister defending him tooth and nail, to the effect that he is a non-elected person of trust who is also a successful businessman – insinuating it was fine for him to have set up his shady company and trust right after being carried over the threshold of Castille by the Prime Minister.
Having failed the court of public opinion that time around, the Prime Minister now has another chance. There have been fresh allegations raised that Mr Schembri took kickbacks on the sale of Maltese citizenships. The Opposition Leader, meanwhile, says he has hard proof that he did so, and he has presented this proof to the ongoing magisterial inquiry.
Perhaps the Prime Minister could call in the Opposition Leader to show him the proof he says he has against his chief of staff.
If satisfied, after that and even though he is effectively a caretaker prime minister at the moment, he would be well advised to have Mr Schembri step down at least until his name is cleared by the inquiry. This is, after all, the second time that Mr Schembri has been hit with corruption allegations, and this time around there is more than the suggestion of intent, there appears to be solid proof.
This would admittedly be a mere token gesture all things considered, but it would give the people out there some sort of solace that the Prime Minister will not tolerate corruption among his closest aides.
It would also earn him a modicum of respect in the area of good governance, where he has failed so magnanimously in most of the public eye over the last four years. It is, however, more than likely that the Prime Minister has already had such thoughts and that they have been brushed aside in the same way that he is brushing aside the heaviest allegations of corruption to have hit a Maltese government in living memory. But such suggestions are, like the calling of the general election, his prerogative alone.