[ANALYSIS] Robert the Confessor: magnanimity or convenience?

In the Catholic universe, some sins take you to purgatory, others to hell. In Robert Abela’s universe, some misdemeanours are punishable by temporary exile. But it remains unclear which sins merit a permanent interdiction.

Abela is not reinventing the wheel. In 2004 Lawrence Gonzi had forced his foreign minister John Dalli to resign over revelations that his minister had carried out Lm40,000 worth of ministerial bookings through a travel agency that owned a share in another company with his two daughters as directors. But he was reappointed health minister after the 2008 general election, and then kicked upstairs to the European Commission, from which he ended up resigning in disgrace amidst the snus scandal of 2012.

But while it is understandable that MPs guilty of minor misdemeanours, such as being involved in a traffic contravention are given a second chance, things get more complicated in cases involving government funds.

In the case of former education minister Justyne Caruana, one may well argue that she was already given a deserved second chance following her first resignation. In that case, Abela had himself raised the bar to a new level, with Caruana being fired not because of a fault of her own but because her estranged husband Silvio Valletta, a high-ranking police officer and FIAU official, had befriended murder suspect Yorgen Fenech.

Justyne Caruana

But after a few months in the wilderness, Caruana was reappointed education minister, only to be kicked out again after the Commissioner of Standards found that she breached ethics when gifting a €15,000 contract to her new partner Daniel Bogdanovic.

She never showed any remorse and went on to challenge the constitutional validity of the Commissioner’s decision in the law courts. Significantly, it was Abela who brought up Caruana’s name in an interview on TVM’s Xtra earlier this week, when he was asked about Labour MEP Josianne Cutajar’s announcement that she will not be seeking re-election. In a clear indication of his intention to forgive her, Abela rhetorically asked: “Isn’t she another person we lost in politics?”

The return of Rosianne

Independent MP Rosianne Cutajar (Photo: James Bianchi/MaltaToday)

Abela’s absolution of Caruana’s sins came days after he indicated that former Labour MP (now independent) Rosianne Cutajar may be allowed back in the party’s parliamentary group from which she had reluctantly resigned over embarrassing chats with alleged Caruana Galizia assassination mastermind Yorgen Fenech. In those chats she justified an upcoming plum job with ITS by pointing out that “everybody else was pigging out anyway”.

Although initially Abela had defended Cutajar over the publication of chats exposing her private life, the Labour MP was asked to resign after the chats became the talk of town.

Cutajar had already been kicked out from Abela’s Cabinet in 2021, over her role in a property deal with Fenech, that was also confirmed in a report by the Standards Commissioner.

Now Abela insists that both Cutajar and Caruana have paid the price for their sins and may be absolved again. But how will this impact on the other casualties of Abela’s decision to raise the bar after taking over from his disgraced predecessor?

Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Chris Cardona - the unforgivable

(From left) Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Chris Cardona

Despite being implicated in the Panama Papers in which his financial advisers had named Fenech’s 17 Black as the source of funds to be deposited in a secret offshore company, former energy minister Konrad Mizzi has never been found guilty by a court of law.

Moreover, he was kicked out of the parliamentary group following reports suggesting that Fenech’s 17 Black had profited from a wind farm project Enemalta bought in Montenegro in late 2015, when Mizzi was energy minister.

But by kicking Mizzi out a few months after being elected leader, Abela distanced himself from the Panama cabal and indirectly from his predecessor. When accused of lowering the bar by dispensing forgiveness for lesser crimes, Abela can always say: “Look there are still sins which I will never forgive.”

The other casualty was Chris Cardona, who resigned from Labour deputy leader after being named in court by self-confessed murder middleman, Melvin Theuma, in connection with the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder plot. The former minister denied all involvement in the murder.

And neither has Abela shown any sympathy for Keith Schembri, the architect of Labour’s stratospheric victories in 2013 and 2017, who was already singled out by Abela as “that cuckold who fucked” Muscat, during a fateful Cabinet meeting before Muscat’s resignation.

It is highly improbable that any of the three will ever be rehabilitated. Yet all three were interdicted in the absence of any political verdict on the Muscat era.

‘My friend’ Joseph Muscat: the one he dares not judge

Former prime minister Joseph Muscat

Joseph Muscat remains a prickly thorn in Abela’s side but one which is too dangerous for him to pluck.

And here lies the weakness of Abela’s position. Had Abela distanced himself politically from Muscat back in 2020 he may well be less exposed today from any fall-out from the magisterial inquiry on the Vitals deal. In fact, it is hard not to see the latest dispensations of forgiveness to perceived minor political allies of Muscat, as olive branches to the former leader or attempts to defuse internal tensions before a possible arraignment of the former leader.

And by recently referring to Muscat as a friend, Abela is sending a message to the grassroots that he has not abandoned the beloved former leader to his fate.

But in the worst-case scenario of an arraignment the same grassroots will also ask ‘what is Abela doing now to help a friend in need?’ Perhaps Abela wants to avert any perception that he is complicit in any judicial decision to arraign Muscat. But as a result, he is raising expectations of a showdown with the judiciary, which Abela is not so keen on.

The (electoral) logic behind magnanimity

Beyond internal balancing acts, there is also a crude electoral calculation in Abela’ s decision to offer political redemption. With surveys showing thousands of Labourites threatening not to vote in forthcoming midterm elections, Abela is trying to stop the hemorrhage, fully knowing that the least thing he needs now is to be badmouthed by party stalwarts who command a loyal constituency.

Moreover, despite her frank admission of eating from the pigs’ trough, the indomitable Rosianne Cutajar remains popular among the party’s grassroots, partly because of demonisation from the other side, on which she thrives.

Abela knows that he can’t afford to have former Labour MPs vindicating the abstention of his constituents. And Justyne Caruana now may also fill a vacancy in the strategic Gozo district, amidst speculation of a prospective MEP candidature following Josianne Cutajar’s decision not to contest the district.

Still, rehabilitating her and others guilty of so-called misdemeanours risks alienating another segment of Labour’s electoral bloc: voters who switched to Labour after being attracted by Muscat’s promise of a more modern, meritocratic, open and socially liberal country; an alluring roadmap that was derailed by Panamagate and its spin-offs.

While Abela is willing to pander to the constituencies of errant MPs who damaged the party’s good governance credentials, he seems less eager to address the concerns of local communities in Labour’s heartlands like Santa Lucija, swamped by over-development.

The question is what is Abela doing to motivate those voters who still shun the PN and yearn for progressive changes, but who are increasingly frustrated by the PM’s antics?

His calculation may well be that in MEP elections, where turnout is bound to be low, it is the party which is most effective in mobilising its core voters – including constituents of errant MPs – which is best poised to win.