Three parliamentary votes — all with the same result — would seem to have buried the Panama Papers issue, and in any other circumstance would have found the entire country up in arms against whoever mentioned the subject again.

And yet, this is not happening. Panama Papers is far from dead and buried. Nor should it be, not when the government and its head have acted the way they have over the revelations. It may be that there are not so many surprises in store, but what has been revealed is more than enough for the population at large to assimilate, and such a huge body of details needs time to seep in the general consciousness.

Panama Papers has a momentum of its own, independent of what we all would like it to do. Had it been tackled the way it should have been, its impact could well have decreased over these months, but it was not tackled the right way and that gives it a toxicity of its own.

It may have left government high and dry in Parliament but otherwise it has left a government that is split down the middle, with MPs and even ministers who say one thing and then vote for the government, with people making a beeline to escape having to comment on the case, even when it falls clearly within their remit, or making oblique sounds, always falling short of really coming out and saying how disgusted they are with the situation.

If Prime Minister Muscat really wants to know what his colleagues really – but really – think, let him have a secret ballot and take it up from there.

From the three parliamentary debates, take out the time spent in attacking the Opposition, the time spent boasting what this government has been doing and downplaying anything done before March 2013 and you are left with just scraps, crumbs.

I don’t believe the issue will die down, much as the government would want it to do. It has become the call-sign of this government, which will find it very hard to shake off its smell, nay stench. In ways that maybe he did not foresee, Konrad Mizzi has left his signature imprint on this administration, even more, far more, than Joseph Muscat, who in contrast comes across as not being all that strong with his subaltern. Any other government would have shaken off such a minister, valuable as he undoubtedly is. PN, for all its faults, did it with John Dalli, who was even more central to the successive PN administrations. There was hell to pay, but the PN did what Joe Muscat did not.

Government ministers have said it: this issue is detracting attention from all the good the government is doing – and it’s true.

For the vast majority of Maltese, professionals excluded perhaps, talk about trust funds, tax avoidance or tax planning, jurisdictions such as BVI or indeed Panama, is a new language. It is a sign of the growing affluence of Malta, where some people are able to make huge sums of profits which they then secret away far from the prying eyes of the taxman.

But to conclude from this that ‘everybody’s doing it’ is to drastically misread what is happening in Malta. The recent Caritas study on the extent of poverty in Malta sits uncomfortably next to ministers with all that declared income in their return of assets, with a prime minister who hires out his own car to the State, and with a minister flying around the world to open trust funds and companies at the other end of the world. Where one minister tried to tell us he was doing it all for charity, Konrad Mizzi tells us he was doing it for the family – a more acceptable reason for the Maltese, whether it’s true or not.

The trio of Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna jetting around the world setting up companies in such jurisdictions is a different planet from the one most Maltese live in.

Whatever the Labour grassroots thought while applauding Dr Mizzi when he was under attack by the PN, deep down in their hearts they must have been remarking how different their own humdrum lives are in contrast to jet-set Mizzi, Schembri and Tonna. Whether they will still continue to militate in the party with such people at the top has yet to be seen. For never has Labour had people at the top who live such a different kind of live to the grassroots – not Mintoff, certainly not Karmenu and not even Alfred Sant.

I remember a devastatingly pungent cartoon from the 1970s showing a patrician Enrico Berlinguer in a high-class dressing gown reading a paper at home and then roughing up his hair and donning a working class raincoat to go and take part in a demo.

It would seem the tide is now turning with regards to Joe Bannister the MFSA head. There were times when I thought this issue would peter out seeing it was only Evarist Bartolo who was harping on it. Then I thought this could lead to a fourth vote in the House and let’s see which side Evarist for all his dialectical skill, would jump to. Now it seems Marlene Farrugia has latched on, so maybe something will be done.

But then caution got the better of me and the fear that the Bannister issue might divert public attention from the Panama Papers issue. The focus must remain on the Panama Papers and the implications at the very top of the government. Of course, the two issues – Bannister and Panama Papers – are not so unrelated, considering what MFSA does to any investor with its cumbersome due diligence process and then it allows what we now know took place through Panama Papers. The next time MFSA tries to suborn any infraction of the rules, people will turn back and ask it what did it do in the cases of Brian Tonna et al.

Other issues crowd the horizon – from the Brexit referendum to the fight against Isis – and it will be hard going to keep this one issue at the centre of national attention. Keep focused.

 

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