Over the past few months there has been a growing distinction between the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party.
While the PN is setting standards and raising the bar on good governance, Labour is faltering miserably when it comes to dealing with such issues.
On the PN’s side, it started with Giovanna Debono and continued with Joe Cassar. In Debono’s case, leader Simon Busuttil had no qualms in asking her to move out of the party group when her husband was charged with irregularities in the Gozo Courts. With regard to Joe Cassar, the former health minister did not need any pushing, but was man enough to call it quits when he admitted to receiving a gift he was bound to refuse.
But things work differently on Labour’s side. Two parliamentary secretaries have been involved in scandals that are far worse than the ones mentioned above, and yet they both still hold on to their seat. What’s more, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat does not feel it necessary to send them packing, in spite of the bad image both of them have caused to the government.
Michael Falzon has been involved in a property deal that should never have taken place while Ian Borg has been found by the Ombudsman to have used “devious and deliberate” ways to obtain a building permit from Mepa.
Added to this, we had the Joe Debono Grech incident in Parliament which the Prime Minister brushed off as if nothing had happened. By not offering an apology or reprimanding the MP publicly, Joseph Muscat condoned Debono Grech’s behaviour and opened the way for others, including Minister Helena Dalli, to defend the indefensible.
Joseph Muscat promised accountability before the election, but he has not maintained his promise on this one (and many other pledges). It is clear that saying something to win an election is much easier than implementing that assurance. It is useless saying that similar situations had taken place under Nationalist administrations. The people voted against the PN, and voted in favour of Labour because the PL promised a new beginning. But matters have not improved. Instead, the situation has gone from bad to worse.
Two other circumstances are exposing a Labour Party that has its own deceitful ways in trying to put the Nationalist Party or its exponents in bad light. Both have backfired on the Labour Party, but the fact that these circumstances were “created” goes to prove that Labour is doing its best to try to hide its own shortcomings by attempting to pin scandals on others.
It happened in the Francis Zammit Dimech case, with the Nationalist MP being thrown into the lion’s den over the death of a worker in a construction project by a company of which the MP is a director. Labour and its friendly media made a huge mountain of this, making it seem that Dr Zammit Dimech was a murderer only for the case against him to be thrown out of the court – rightly so – before it even started. No apology has been forthcoming from Joseph Muscat.
And it happened in the case of the amount of fuel consumed by the Opposition Leader’s car. Again, Labour built up the case to make it seem like Watergate only to realise that there is no case at all. Now there is a rush to limit the damage – the damage which this “story” caused Labour, not Simon Busuttil.
If anything, this “story” strengthened the image of the Opposition Leader, and conversely showed a Labour Party and a Prime Minister who are desperately – and deviously too – trying to shift attention away from the government’s scandals by inventing others on their political opponents.