As every football fan knows, when a team loses the initiative and is constrained to defend, defend, defend, with its back to the wall, that team has lost the game.

So far, ever since the Budget, this government has lost the initiative and the Malliagate saga has taken over. The momentum goes on day after day, with new titbits being served, and further developments expected.

This is something that is new. It is very different from an organised spin, for most of the signal developments in the saga seem to come from different sources.

There are keen minds around who compare and contrast the statements made and constantly punch holes in them. This has not been a particularly hard task considering the contradictions and constant U-turns of the saga.

But what is really fascinating is how the tapes and then the transcripts of phone calls made on that evening came to be in the hands of the Opposition whose media immediately broke the news?

It would be easy to point a finger at the police headquarters control room. That, if confirmed, only tells part of the story. Who obtained it and why it was used to discredit the minister and those who the minister supports in there is another story, actually the real story. Are we facing internecine war inside the Police Corps and what does it hope to obtain by pulling down the Depot around its head?

A visitor from Mars might object as to how this episode of a shooting, possibly in over-reaction unless there was something else, has come to dominate conversation in the country - regardless the political convictions of those one meets. It is not just the inconsistency between the first statement by DOI and later developments.

Minister Mallia has argued himself hoarse to the effect that he does not really know the substitute driver. Then people came up with claims he and the driver were quite chummy. Now the driver is in jail and the minister is visibly squirming. For a minister to allow a driver who he does not really know to take care of his offspring is hardly credible.

One issue is why the driver felt so angry at the other person’s careless driving that nicked the car mirror that he produced his gun and drove after him until he cornered him and shot at him. Some people are like that, they over-react and become extra-violent. It will now be the Courts of Law to investigate this.

Then there was the over-the-top reaction by most of the top brass of the police who not only somehow made their way to the spot but also took matters into their hands and tampered with the evidence. It is amazing how seasoned police officers suddenly and for some reason not immediately evident to us, threw away the book of police procedure and loaded the car onto the towing truck and carefully sifted and retrieved the bullet cartridges.

All this has brought into the limelight the network of former clients the minister enjoyed in his previous lifetime as a lawyer and how some of these enjoy family relations that seem to have greatly benefitted them. Again, it would seem that networks and/or corruption go deep in the corps.

At the centre of this entire saga there is the controversial figure of Minister Manwel Mallia: the whole saga revolves round him. Yet he was not there at the shooting, and so far no decision taken by him has been proved, it seems more a case of an over-zealous police corps out to defend him against [imaginary] foes.

I rather discount the rapturous welcome he got when he strode into the tent structure on Palace Square to the ‘Gvern li jisma’ event. The Nationalist crowd had been equally rapturous with JPO after he led Alfred Sant a merry dance round the TVM studios in 2008. These epiphanies rarely count for much.

But Minister Mallia is no JPO. He is a king-pin of the present government. I said it before, and I will say it again: Joseph Muscat will find it hard to remove him. I’ll say more: at this point I would be very surprised if he shifts him to another ministry. Dr Mallia is in a strong position and he knows it. And his supporters, I was going to write clients, know this too.

For those tapes to have surfaced, however, he must have some cunning and deeply motivated enemies who still hope to bring him down. Again, seeing it from some distance from the main players, the minister must have trodden on some big toes. We’re not talking about Nationalists here, we may be talking about the big Labour diaspora. Something is not right in the State of Denmark and this may also explain a certain reticence in the way the government is treating the whole issue.

The three retired judges appointed by the Prime Minister to examine the whole issue were appointed before the Malliagate tapes surfaced and I very much doubt if their remit includes delving into the tapes question. So any conclusion they may come to is already rendered half obsolete.

The issue is not just what happened in that tunnel and whether possible evidence was tampered with but has now been widened, in the public eye at least, into the not immaterial issue whether the minister lied when he could not lie at all.

To tell the truth and prove to people one is trustworthy is a currency no politician can be without. A politician who lies and acts as if he has no regrets doing so foregoes the public’s trust. That politician is digging his own political grave and is bringing the party and the government he may be a member of into disrepute.

I still have a feeling this vein has yet to deliver, though I know not in what direction and to what extent. There is clearly the urgent need for a thorough reform of the corps and it is equally clear the current minister cannot do that; in fact the Malliagate saga is the proof he is far too tied down to be able to wield just administration.

It is also clear that if this is the government, this is no Socialist one but rather one where money and power are the be-all and end-all of everything. Minister Mallia says he was there at Tal-Barrani, and so say many who may not all have been there, but in any case the Tal-Barrani medal has been so devalued as to be used by anyone and everyone. But then, this was, with hindsight, one of the PN’s gravest mistakes, that they took on anyone who said he was at Tal-Barrani too, like they took on without checking all those who said they would have liked to become politicians.

Prime Minister Muscat has Mallia round his neck and he cannot, or would not, shake him off. The past fortnight must have been a nightmare at Castille, not just for Dr Muscat but also for Kurt Farrugia his Communications Officer. The saga is destined to go on and on, or get swamped with something new that may develop. The Budget went up in smoke and nobody talks about it anymore.

Without noticing, we are getting to the Labour government’s 22 months in power, not that it is in any way shaky or has just a one-seat majority. Still, such a huge majority as was obtained in March 2013 has by its very amplitude sowed the seeds of its own downfall.

 

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