Full disclosure and cut them loose now
There is a lot to be said of yesterday’s events that saw the arrest of Yorgen Fenech of 17 Black infamy, who was apparently on his way out of the country on a private yacht the morning after a middleman was reportedly spilling the whole can of beans on the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination plot.
There is a lot of talk about the who and the how, but not enough about the why of that murder. The how has come out very clearly and in grisly detail in the courts as the hit men face justice.
We will likely know more about the who after the arrest of the middleman and that of Fenech.
But as for the why, one must look to the who. The man arrested yesterday is the same man who had been exposed as the owner of 17 Black, the company that had been linked to kickbacks directed towards Panamanian companies owned respectively by Office of the Prime Minister chief of staff Keith Schembri and former energy and current tourism minister Konrad Mizzi.
This newsroom has in the past published leaked Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit reports, which have been corroborated, linking 17 Black to those kickbacks to companies owned by those two people - the left and the right hand of the Prime Minister himself.
The facts of the matter could not have been any clearer, and they have been written on the wall, in bold, for literally years now. We have printed them in plain black and white and we have screamed for action until we were blue in the face.
These two people are currently so knee-deep in this quagmire, and presumably sinking in quicksand, that even the Prime Minister, if one were to listen closely his words yesterday is about to cut the both of them loose.
And it is high time he did so.
But what is utterly ironic about the Prime Minister’s comments to the press yesterday morning was that he said the Fenech’s arrest yesterday proves that the country’s institutions are robust and working.
Come again?
The Prime Minister briefs journalists about a criminal investigation which implicates his closest associates and yet he says that the arrest proves Malta's institutions are working, while, in actual fact, he and his associates are the institution.
It seems the Prime Minister is using this whole tragedy as a PR opportunity, to come out unscathed and smelling of roses.
Enough is enough. We have seen too much, we have endured too much. The truth has been swept under the carpet for far too long.
Muscat has only one choice available to him before the proverbial well and truly hits the fan: he needs to cut Schembri and Mizzi loose once and for all, they are too involved in this nasty business, too tarnished to be fit for any kind of public office.
The Opposition yesterday evening staged a walkout of Parliament after the Prime Minister refused to answer about their futures at his side.
The Opposition, in fact, should not return until there is absolute full disclosure from the government side of the House about the power station corruption debacle, and about the private wheelings and dealings of these two people while acting on behalf of the state.
After Fenech’s arrest, the game is just about up. It is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end of this whole charade. The country deserves justice and closure, no more and no less.
But the good news is that, even if this does not happen under the current administration, a future administration under another political party will, thanks to Muscat’s 2013 electoral pledge to remove prescription political corruption, be able to make sure that this case is prosecuted, even decades down the road from now.