Three years before the March 2013 election, Joseph Muscat announced a multitude of measures and promised that, if Labourwas elected, the Labour Government would implement them. With the election approaching, Labour published its electoral manifesto. Amongst various items, a section dealt with measures promised to strengthen democracy and transparencyincluding good governance (‘Politika nadifa’) and the fight against corruption (‘Niġġieldu l-korruzzjoni’).
Muscat’s promises
As with many other Muscat promises, time is showing that his promised measures for good governance and fighting corruption were a delusion. Apparently, Joseph Muscat forgot or prefers to ignore what his predecessor, Dom Mintoff, said in 1976. Addressing his faithful, Mintoff warned that “The Party should be more afraid of corruption than of its enemies as corruption erodes the Party’s heart and soul”.
A year after he was elected Prime Minister, Muscat arrogantly declared that “We did not breach any of our promises, not even one of them. We shall govern and keep all our promises. Judge us on what we did during the past first year in government. We do not mind being judged”. Also, when interviewed on the national television station,Muscat nauseatingly kept repeating that he always keeps his promises. By then, the Maltese had already started realising this was not so.
Joseph Muscat does not respect people’s intelligence. The Maltese are not naive and therefore do not believe everything he says. After experiencing a number of Muscat’s unfulfilled promises, the Maltese can no longer believe him. It is incredible how Muscat maintains that he and his Government are honouring all the promises made prior to the election when, over the past four years, the Maltese are witnessingthe opposite.
Before the election, Muscat,with his honeyed words,made the majority of the electorate trust him.Four years later, the Maltese know what Muscat’s promises and frivolous words are worth. The Maltese note that Muscat tries to impress by saying what he thinks the audience wants to hear,which, in some cases could be far from reality. With his audience, Muscat lives a lie. I quote the philosopher Plato “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools speak because they have to say something”.
Fighting corruption?
Muscat achieved his aim when he became Prime Minister. He was expected to lead the country according to what he and Labour promised including, but not only, to fight corruption. Prior to the election, Muscat insisted that “he who does not fight corruption when in power is corrupt”. These four years have been dominated by one scandal following another – with stinks of corruption emanating from some of them. Some scandals involve high officials in the Office of the Prime Minister. The Maltese have become accustomed to await a new scandal every day; hence the list is too long to mention.
However, one immediately recalls the scandal of the Australia Hall which Muscat’s Labour Government passed to,thus enriching, Muscat’s Labour Party. Also, scandalscensored by the Auditor General, werethe quick move by the Labour Government to withdraw legal procedures instituted by the Nationalist administration against the owners of Café Premier and the payment by Government to them of €4.2 million to rescind the lease and the Gaffarena scandal regarding expropriation by Government of half a property in Valletta involving a settlement in cash and property amounting to €3.5 million. Regarding this latter scandal, ex-Parliamentary Secretary Michael Falzon, who was removed after the revelation, declared that he “was carrying someone else’s cross” however never mentioned who the “someone else” is.
Thirteen months ago, the Panama Papers international scandal took Malta by storm. It revealed that Minister Konrad Mizzi (the only mentioned Minister from an EU state), Keith Schembri, Muscat’s Chief of Staff,and someone else owned secret financial activities in Panama and elsewhere.
Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri are responsible for the greatest political crisisMuscat has had to face, so far, since stepping into Castille.Yet Muscat is holding on to them.For reasons unknown to us,Muscatused double standards in his treatment of Mizzi and Schembri compared with his earlier demand for resignations from Godfrey Farrugia, Manuel Mallia and Michael Falzon.The Panama Papers scandal is still ongoing and Muscat hardly did anything about it – except saying that it was his legislature’s most disappointing event (so far), yet keeps defending Mizzi and Schembri. This scandal is an albatross forMuscat. It will keep haunting him.
Transparency?
The Labour electoral manifesto included a section promising measures promoting transparency and accountability. Muscat’s government is ignoring these promises like many others in the manifesto. Muscat’s and Labour’s promisesabout transparency and accountability took off on the wrong foot.Shortly after the election, contacts started with Azerbaijan – a country notorious for its corrupt practises. Eventually, Muscat – accompanied by Minister Konrad Mizzi and his Chief of Staff Keith Schembri – paid a “secret” visit to Azerbaijan without the usual prior official announcement and unaccompanied by any Civil Service official as is customary in such cases.
Also, the past four years have been characterised by a number of agreementswhich have not been shown the light of dayby Government. This, notwithstanding various requests for their publication by the Opposition and other organisations. Government promised to publish them by the end of last year, however this did not materialise. Furthermore, when some agreements were published, many empty pages and blacked-out clauses stood out. Lack of transparency carries with it lack of good governance and lack of accountability and gives rise to suspicion. The electorate was promised otherwise.
Good governance?
A few weeks before the Panama Papers scandal exploded Joseph Muscat declared that his government would tackle the issue of governance head-on “because we want to show that we are changing direction and will continue to change”.
Good governance should be accountable, transparent and follows the rule of law. However, notwithstanding Muscat’s declarations and past promises, wherever one looks there is a good governance scandal either exploding or brewing, under a government that campaigned so vociferously on a platform of good governance, accountability and transparency.In these areas, despite its platitudes, the Labour government is failing miserably.Some cases would, in most democratic countries, have seen heads roll but in Malta we appear to have a different, and lower, benchmark when it comes to good governance.
A fortnight ago, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Enterprise during a meeting in the presence of Joseph Muscat statedthat “We cannot shy away from our responsibilities to express our utmost concern about the issues of good governance which we are allowing to persist consistently”.He also expressed concern over the impact that diminishing transparency could have on Malta's ability to entice investment.
Two days later,the outgoing President of the Malta Employers’ Association declared thatMalta’s loss of ten positions in Transparency International’s corruption index is not an indication of good governance. He added that a strongly-perceived regression in administrative transparency does not encourage investment and the same applies to regulatory transparency, which is an important requisite for the health of the high employment financial sector.
Accusations and warnings
Joseph Muscat, as Leader of the Opposition, accused the then Nationalist administration of bad governance,corruptionand lack of transparency and accountability. He promised a change of direction. One expected Muscat and Labourin government to practise what they promised and preached. Cicero, the Roman political theorist, used to say: “It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to ignore his own”.
Four weeks prior to the election, the electorate was warned.After his forced resignation from Labour,Anglu Farrugia said he fearedLabour was changing its core values from a party which mainly represented the working class to one feeling comfortable with big businessmen as he (Farrugia) knew contractors close with individuals involved in Labour’s finances.
Even Lawrence Gonzi, then Prime Minister, warned that “For Muscat’s mistakes, the taxpayer will pay”. The taxpayer is paying for all the scandals, bad governance, lack of transparency and lack of accountability. Since after the election, Malta does not belong to all of us as promised. Malta belongs to a political clique, the privileged few, living lavishly on taxpayers’ money.
Most of Muscat’s pre-election promises have crumbled.