The issue of corruption is still there

Maybe in the opinion of many, maybe even in the minds of supporters of the Opposition party, the issues that were highlighted in the recent election campaign, now that the election has been decided and the way it has been decided, are now obsolete. This is completely wrong. To accept such reasoning would mean that the issue of corruption was just an election gimmick, a trick to get people to vote Joseph Muscat and his party out of office. On the contrary, the issue is still all there and must be faced. If the issue is now obsolete in the minds of many Maltese, it is not obsolete in the minds of people outside Malta and certainly not obsolete in the minds of authorities at EU and at European Parliament level. And if these multiple issues have seriously damaged Malta’s reputation, they are still there and it will only be effective and determined action on the part of Malta that can remove the stigma. So far, we have to say, there has been nothing done to lead us to believe that if the issue was not faced in the pre-election months, it is being faced up to now. There have been some slight changes, it is true. The supervision of the financial sector has passed from the hands of the Finance Minister, who has remained the same person, to the hands of the Prime Minister himself, with the addition of a specific parliamentary secretary. But the issue, in all its complexity and ramifications, remains. The many libel cases, which will tax the court’s meagre resources, remain. Until these cases are decided, the allegations that were made, still stand. The European Parliament’s PANA committee is still standing, as still do its unanswered questions. More to the point, the Prime Minister has withstood all pressures for him to remove both Minister Konrad Mizzi and his aide Keith Schembri because of their involvement in the Panama Papers. On the contrary, Dr Mizzi is still a minister and has been tasked with the important task of resurrecting Air Malta and overseeing the important tourism sector. The international ramifications of these and allied allegations are still there with all their toxic effects. Let us admit that claims that a nation is a tax haven are very easy to make, and, in fact, they have been made about a great number of jurisdictions. It may be that such allegations do not impede the flow of inward investment. On the contrary, it would seem that a certain proportion of inward investment does not seem bothered by such allegations, in many different countries. Among the world’s most highly regarded countries, there are some who can be classified as tax havens. But they do not get the stigma. It is small and unprotected countries such as Malta who get it. Maybe it was not a wise step to structure an election campaign around these allegations, and in fact the election result seems to point in this way. But the continued spillage of the Panama issue, the revelations about what went on inside FIAU and its relationships with the police and also with the Attorney General – all go to show that the fire has not been doused at all and that there are still sparks among the embers. Now we can go on like this for years and years and our reputation will be seriously dented as it is. Or else someone, some time , gets down to the hard task of cleaning Malta’s damaged reputation. It would be interesting if the Finance Minister tells us what he planned to do to repair Malta’s damaged reputation as he promised to do if he were elected as his party’s Deputy Leader, now that he has lost this battle.