[ANALYSIS] Is Robert Abela salami-slicing Joseph Muscat’s legacy?

Actions speak louder than words. And the arrest of former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri and ten others, including Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna and Karl Cini, on money laundering and corruption charges goes a long way in clearing the air from the impunity which characterised Malta under Robert Abela’s predecessor.

But Abela’s economy on the political implications of the arrest of his predecessor’s closest ally, risks sending a mixed message to Labour supporters who for the past four years have been fed the narrative that Schembri was a victim of the Nationalist establishment.

Abela’s balancing act

The confusion among Labour supporters on Facebook is palpable. A few now openly deride Keith Schembri and express strong doubts on Joseph Muscat. Others have ditched Schembri but still defend the Labour leader, absolving him of any blame. The vast majority are shocked at seeing former PN leader Simon Busuttil partly vindicated.

Faced with the complex dynamics of his own broad church, which ranges from fervent tribalists to floaters seduced by Labour’s inclusive 2013 appeal, Robert Abela was understandably careful in his choice of words in reaction to the arrests the previous day. It appeared to be a balancing act between reaping the political dividends from the arrests among M.O.R. voters by taking credit for police action against the alleged culprits, without irking Joseph Muscat’s fan base.

In the face of the evidence piling up in his face, Abela seems to be reluctantly laying the ground for a reckoning with the Muscat loyalist base, possibly by weakening the hold on Labour voters his predecessor with an act of ‘salami slicing’ without himself coming in the line of fire. It’s the same strategy that eroded internal support for former energy minister Konrad Mizzi, who remains expelled from the party.

Neither did Abela hide away by delivering a Sunday sermon with the help of in-house journalists; he instead faced questions from the media, fully knowing that he would be asked about Schembri and Muscat. This suggests that Abela wants to appropriate for himself credit for arrests triggered by an inquiry instigated by former leader of the opposition Simon Busuttil.

Clearly Abela wants to reach out to the independent media, to send a message to M.O.R. voters, whose trust in the institutions is being restored by actions which speak for themselves. Abela knows that his party can only consolidate its support in this category if it distances itself from the impunity characterising the Muscat era. But he cannot spell out such this message clearly, because he is conditioned by the fact that he has inherited his mandate from a Muscat government re-elected in power in 2017 after denying any allegation of wrongdoing by his inner circle, including the allegations against Keith Schembri which led to last Saturday’s arrests.

Former OPM Keith Schembri

The message to middle-of-the-road voters

In his balancing act, Abela is underlining three important messages to M.O.R. voters.

The first was distancing himself and the party from Keith Schembri, refusing to apologise for the party’s collective past defence of Muscat’s most trusted aide on the premise that he would “only answer” to what happened under his watch.

Secondly he insisted that there will be no impunity for “untouchables” under a “government led by Robert Abela”. Craftily he made this point in reference to failure to clamp down on criminal gangs under PN governments but fully knowing impunity is also associated with the institutional paralysis under his predecessor.

Thirdly he underlined the message that the arrests are proof that the institutions are functioning correctly “without fear or favour” and reflect the strengthening of institutions like the FIAU left under-funded by previous administrations.

A missed opportunity?

Where Abela’s speech was lacking was in deliberately refusing to pass political judgement, relegating a veritable political earthquake – the arrest of his predecessor’s most important aide on bribery and corruption charges – to a simple case of the police taking action in a criminal case, devoid of a political context. By ignoring the context determined by his predecessor’s decision to keep Schembri in office after the Panama exposé, Abela missed a golden opportunity for atonement; and for his party to reflect on the blurred lines between poachers and gamekeepers, business and politics under his predecessor.

Most importantly, Abela still ignores the root of the problem which is the lack of firewall between politics and big business interests, a common tread which links the assassination of Caruana Galizia, corruption cases involving the privatisation of public assets, and possible tax evasion by the protagonists. And it was Keith Schembri who best incarnated the ethos of the Muscat era, characterised by an incestuous relationship between top businessmen and Labour’s inner circle.

Abela’s failure to confront Muscat’s legacy head-on, strengthens the Opposition’s narrative that he is only acting under duress of judicial inquiries and the impending Moneyval verdict.

Abela’s failure to confront Muscat’s legacy head-on, strengthens the Opposition’s narrative that he is only acting under duress of judicial inquiries and the impending Moneyval verdict

Labour’s spin and embarrassment

Labour’s spin that the case involving former Allied Group managing director Adrian Hilman and Keith Schembri, occurred under the Gonzi administration in the context of a private business deal, obscures the fact that Schembri had the most important position in the country, while owning offshore companies which allegedly facilitated alleged money laundering both prior and after his appointment in Labour’s central nervous system.

This obscures the fact that by retaining Schembri in office after 2017 when the allegations were already well known, Muscat offered Schembri protection by keeping him in the highest office, which in itself had a chilling effect on investigation by the police and the judiciary, possibly shielding him by public office.

But Abela is right in saying that that previous Nationalist governments left behind them a weak infrastructure to combat financial crime. And he is right in taking pride of taking steps to strengthen institutions like the FIAU. But this falls short of denouncing the system which predated Muscat, and reinforced under his watch, without any internal criticism, and with a media regime that absolved Panamagate’s protagonists from justified criticism.

For the greatest embarrassment for Labour was created by propagandists defending people like Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri on One TV, memories of which are bound to come back to haunt Abela in the absence of a general clean-up. In all this Abela may be missing a golden opportunity; that of reclaiming his party’s reputation as the voice of good governance, a reputation which had been painfully reclaimed by Alfred Sant in the 1990s after it was fatally wounded by Lorry Sant’s antics in the 1980s.

The party is duty-bound to ask itself: how did it allow itself to be hijacked once again by a clique motivated by its own greed?

Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà

The PN’s dilemma

While the Opposition’s anger at Labour’s failure to recognise its past errors is justified, it would make a great mistake on its part not to recognise the change in the political climate. Under Angelo Gafà, appointed under the Abela administration, the police force is showing no fear or favour in apprehending and building a strong case against the suspects. Who would have imagined Muscat’s closest ally spending the night in jail under the watch of a Labour government?

Irrespective of the Opposition’s crucial role in exposing corruption cases in the past, the public is bound to notice the difference between the impunity under Muscat and police action against yesterday’s untouchables under Abela. In this context the Opposition may well offer it hand of cooperation, present a blueprint of good governance reforms while keeping the pressure on Abela to keep true to his words that justice is served. The risk of going overboard is that people would suspect that its sole motivation is to short-circuit its way back to power, a mistake which backfired in a spectacular way in 2017.