Choosing the country over the self
The whistle-blower confirmed that the documents exist. The whistle-blower confirmed that the documents exist. One more time: The whistle-blower confirmed that the documents exist.
More probably than not, if we had to paste the sentence from the front page to the back page of this newspaper, get all the other newspapers to follow in our footsteps and give out free newspapers to everyone, the frown on the electorate’s face will remain intact, uninterrupted and unmovable.
The Prime Minister of this country is faced with the biggest allegation ever levelled against a prime minister in Maltese history, and he has the gall to call an election as though nothing happened. Surely people must come to their senses and question the Prime Minister’s haste in choosing the earliest possible date to hold an election. Only a prime minister who is in panic mode would rush to the polls before a magisterial inquiry in which he is at centre stage is concluded. The reason
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can be only one: In a special edition of INDEPTH, the whistle-blower confirmed that the documents exist.
Should those documents surface, and should they be confirmed as authentic, the Prime Minister has nowhere else to go. Yet it is with great regret that one sees in our young politicians a lack of transparency in the way they operate. No other prime minister in the democratic world would dare stay on to lead the nation with such allegations hanging over his and his spouse’s heads, let alone call an election and lead his party into an electoral campaign. It’s surreal.
It is ironic that Joseph Muscat, who four years ago lured thousands of voters to switch to Labour on the promise of a change to more transparency and meritocracy, had to choose an electoral process to save his skin.
Make no mistake; the election wasn’t called because the economy will be suffering or because investors have stopped pumping money into the economy. The election was called purely because of the whistle-blower who dared challenge a network of friends that were using a private bank for dubious transactions. The Prime Minister had the choice to step aside and leave the country in the hands of his deputy, Louis Grech, until the magisterial inquiry he is at the centre of is concluded. If he so believes that he is clean as a whistle then he would have taken back the reigns the moment the inquiry clears him and Mrs Muscat, call a snap election and win hands down. Instead, he placed the whole country on the proverbial sacrificial altar. He ignited a campaign so that the inquiry takes a back seat in peoples’ minds, knowing that heads will heat up with election fever. This is not the way in which a prime minister should behave, and if the people of this nation are going to remain helpless in front of such behaviour, then they sure deserve another five years of scandals and political turmoil over personal gain versus the national interest.