Crucial months to reach our national goals
Prime Minister Robert Abela’s comments on Sunday crystallised the state of the country today, as we stand months away from a renewed opportunity for a positive reality.
This might signify a new start for the Maltese population and one that we have all been anxiously expecting. However, we need to keep on working together to attain it and even more after that in retaining it.
On Sunday, the Prime Minister declared that Malta is in a crucial stage relating to the Moneyval assessment, with two or three months left of hard work to ensure Malta is not grey listed. Government has already received a draft Moneyval report, but the final conclusions won’t come in until around June this year. However, he insisted that work on anti-money laundering and against terrorism financing must continue beyond receiving the final report.
He also stressed that all that led to our country receiving that report, must not happen again and that after June, we need to continue with thought-out changes to ensure not only that we will never have a negative evaluation, but that our country will operate in the way other EU Member States do.
The Prime Minister pointed out that this administration carried out changes in all areas suggested to us by Moneyval and by the Venice Commission, in ways that will prevent Malta retreating back.
He honed in on the point that in 2012, Malta had structural deficiencies in regulation that were ignored rather than addressed.
These remarks by the Prime Minister come on the heel of some tumultuous weeks where his leadership has again come to test, and I believe he has once again shown his strong leadership skills.
One should not underestimate the moral strength he has shown over these last 12 months in managing all national efforts addressing the pandemic.
At the same time, Robert Abela has managed to enable and coordinate all the needed changes in our institutional infrastructure that had no small part in fostering a renewed sense of justice and improved rule of law. The Prime Minister is already reaping the results of actions taken in the past year, showing that rule of law deficiencies are a closed chapter that won’t happen again.
I am full square behind the Prime Minister when he states that the message to all institutions should be that, where there are individuals responsible for certain deficiencies, they must be investigated and if those investigations lead to court procedures, those procedures must be taken.
With the Robert Abela Labour administration starting to reap the hard-earned results of months of reform and change, Malta is now presented with a renewed opportunity.
If we continue following the health authorities’ rules and guidance - a potentially positive Moneyval report might coincide with the easing of health restrictions and a return to a new post Covid reality. Indeed, the months to come offer hope and a new promise for us all as a nation.