Founder and co-owner of MaltaToday, Saviour Balzan has reported on Maltese politics and...
The right thing to do. But it will not be easy...
Prime Minister Robert Abela has a dilemma. He knows that he could potentially be the one to hasten the eradication of the Muscat legacy by revealing the truth. He has a choice to make. It is not an easy one
The Montenegro wind farm link to Yorgen Fenech’s 17 Black company in Dubai, which has been acknowledged as the target company for the secretive Panama accounts opened by Brian Tonna’s Nexia BT for Joseph Muscat’s chief of staff Keith Schembri and former energy minister Konrad Mizzi leave us more shocked than ever before.
The bigger question is where former prime minister Joseph Muscat stands in all this.
Because to those who embraced the ‘Tagħna Lkoll’ ethos for good reason after years of political lethargy, nepotism and incompetence, the rage is without limit. It is unforgivable.
Joseph Muscat’s right-hand men supported a political system that nurtured and fed their greed by way of backroom deals and kickbacks. They may not all be supported by 100% hard proof, but the circumstantial evidence is abundant and the benefit of the doubt has long run out.
What has happened in Maltese politics is that party was allowed to be populated by decision makers with no roots in its socialist tradition and instead saw the party as a vehicle to enrich themselves.
The revelation by Reuters on the Enemalta-Montenegro deal coincided with Malta’s Venice Commission conclusions being made public. The Montenegro scandal reinforces the belief that at this level of corruption, the link between 17 Black and the powers that be is rock solid.
Worse still, the trail takes us to that undulating country road in Bidnija that saw the heinous murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
The outburst that followed the Montenegro story was to be expected. Nationalist leader Adrian Delia’s reaction was lost in the hubbub surrounding the allegations that he had accepted €50,000 from Yorgen Fenech in return for a commitment that he would work against David Casa’s re-election. He has little credibility left, which is a pity considering the sorry state of the Labour party.
For all his faults, David Casa was hard on the heels of 17 Black, definitely seen as a spoke in the wheels by the men at Castille. But what appears to be missing in all this drama, is not the determination to know all the truth. It is evident from what we have been hearing in court from the middleman Melvin Theuma that not all he says is totally convincing. From what we know there are tapes and references to tapes that have been avoided by the prosecution so far.
There are those who believe that the murder of Caruana Galizia was not singularly crafted by Yorgen Fenech. And indeed, this could be a web that reaches out to many others. What is certain is that Fenech is privy to these facts; with the 17 Black story, he is the key to the corruption and kickbacks that lead us to top political figures.
Asking a simple question is more than justified. Would a deal with Yorgen Fenech speed up the investigations leading to the closure of the Caruana Galizia murder and investigations into all the criminal and corrupt dealings of the last Labour administration that have ruined this country’s reputation?
Definitely, those same men who could be ‘parties’ to what happened in October 2017 might have certainly avoided certain questions about whether to issue a pardon or not in November 2019.
Prime Minister Robert Abela has a dilemma. He knows that he could potentially be the one to hasten the eradication of the Muscat legacy by revealing the truth. He has a choice to make. It is not an easy one.
Faced with an Opposition not fit to govern and with no political alternative in sight, he still should not hesitate to seek the truth and closure. Doing the right thing is never going to be easy!
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