Publishing inquiry in full should mean exactly that

Maybe it was planned right from the beginning.

We’re talking about the resistance on the part of Attorney General Peter Grech to publish the full report of the inquiry carried out by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, following revelations made by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his wife were the owners of a company opened in Panama, claims that turned out to be untrue.

Maybe this defiance was part of the plan to make Joseph Muscat a bigger hero as he was the one who gave the go-ahead for the inquiry to be published in full, after the attorney general turned down a formal request by Opposition leader Adrian Delia to make the findings public.

Delia has argued that it is not fair, from a political point of view, that Muscat – having been directly involved in the inquiry – has a full copy and the Opposition doesn’t. But the reason for the full publication should not only be political. The public, as independent media have said, has a right to know the full outcome of the inquiry.

With no evidence found that the Muscats had

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a company in Panama – as did the prime minister’s closest aides Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi – Joseph Muscat has emerged from the investigation unscathed and, more than this, in a much stronger political position, both in his role as head of government and also as leader of the Labour Party.

By being the one to decide that the whole 1,500-page report is to be made available to the public because it is in the national interest, Muscat has added yet another feather to his cap.

But we have to wait and see before piling on more praise. This is because we still have to see what the inquiry says from start to finish and, most of all, because we know that parts of it will be redacted. We have to see what phrases, sentences and paragraphs are eliminated before making our final judgment. We would not like to see a repetition of what happened when the government deals on three public hospitals were published, only for the more relevant parts not to made available.

The prime minister, in his statement on Wednesday evening, made it clear that there is a laborious effort going on to make sure “that its publication does not intrude on the privacy of third parties, hinder investigations and possible proceedings.” This, he added, also given the fact that there was “an orchestrated effort by individuals to use forged documents in order to attempt a frame-up,” which could potentially lead to further legal recourse, as Mrs Muscat herself confirmed in her own statement, also on Wednesday.

This process, the prime minister said, is being taken very seriously, also given the attorney general’s position against publication and will take a few more days. We do not know who is carrying out this exercise, and the prime minister should have gone a step further to say who is involved. Is it the attorney general’s office? Is it a group of lawyers appointed by the prime minister himself?

Ideally, it should be a team of independent advocates who would make sure that all the relevant parts eventually make it to public scrutiny. We do not want to get to the point of anything potentially harmful to the prime minister being removed under the guise of protecting third parties.