Anglu Farrugia must be fuming. Never has it been more clear that he was got rid of not because of his remark about a magistrate, but because JosephMuscatDotCom wanted to replace him with Louis Grech in defiance of the delegates’ vote in 2008.

Yes, the delegates must have been nuts (or just plain old Labour) to choose Farrugia back then, but they also chose Toni Abela and Joseph Muscat, and that’s internal democracy in a political party. Undermine it and what you’ve got is a tin-pot dictatorship.

Let’s not forget that Muscat abolished the post of secretary-general, which is fundamental to a political party, as the extreme means of getting rid of its occupant, Jason Micallef, who was never going to submit to a resignation request.

Now here the Fearless Leader (named after his coffee mug) is, defending his other deputy leader, Toni Abela, in the face of a voice recording that has him explaining how he went down to the police station and exerted undue influence on an officer. I quote the recording precisely (translated from Maltese): “Why do you think I went down to the police station, found a Labour-supporting person, and told him not to proceed for now?”

It all hinges on those three key words: ‘Labour-supporting’ (why are the police officer’s politics important?), ‘told’ (as distinct from asked), and ‘for now’ (which is clearly not a request to stop proceedings altogether but only to put them off).

Toni Abela and his defender on television, Manuel Mallia (a semi-retired trial lawyer who relied on pompous bluff, rather than incisive logic, to impress unsophisticated members of the jury), claim that we’ve all got it wrong, that this was a private matter between two rival barmen, one of whom locked the other out of a Labour Party club. They claim that Toni Abela, acting as a lawyer and not as Labour deputy leader, went down to the station to say that there was no criminal break-in involved as previously thought, so there was no need for prosecution.

Really? So how does that square with Abela’s own recorded words – that he did not ask the police to drop charges, as he now claims, but asked them not to proceed ‘for now’?

He wouldn’t have needed to find a Labour police officer if all he was trying to do was clear up the matter. He needed a Labour police officer because his intention was to influence him not to do his job correctly. And he ‘told’ him, rather than asked him, what to do because he went there as Toni Abela the deputy leader of the Labour Party.

Over the last 24 hours, the Fearless Leader has been asked repeatedly whether he has listened to the recording. He avoids answering that question, saying instead that Toni Abela will give a statement/that Toni Abela is giving a statement/that Toni Abela has given a statement. Yes, Toni Abela has given a statement, and that statement is wholly unsatisfactory and full of yawning gaps and contradictions.

What we need to know now is why Muscat got rid of Inspector Gadget using the excuse of a remark about a magistrate, but now shows no inclination to get rid of Toni Abela for saying specifically that he influenced a police officer in the course of his duties. We know the answer to that question: he needn’t get rid of Toni Abela because Toni can be kept hidden in the padlocked cupboard for another four weeks, but Anglu Farrugia would have been required to speak throughout the campaign, and generally in confrontation with Simon Busuttil.

I have no doubt that Muscat longs to get rid of Toni Abela too. It is quite obvious that Abela’s clumsy speech and behaviour bother him no end, and that Abela is now in a sort of party Siberia, tolerated only because there is no other choice. He is kissed and embraced in public only by Mrs JosephMuscatDotCom. But Muscat knows that while he got away with divesting himself forcibly of one deputy leader, shedding another one within a few weeks might be a step too far even for the ‘please hit me again, I’m Labour and I love a hard fist’ Labour delegates.