The government is in meltdown, and it isn’t because of last week’s revelations about Egrant Inc. That was the catalyst, yes, but there would have been no catalytic effect had the situation in the country been entirely normal. The EgrantInc story exploded precisely because that situation had reached combustion point.
People deal with abnormal or extremely difficult situations which they believe to be beyond their control by rationalising them, by adapting to suit. And those who wish us to become inured to abnormality, or to situations which are bad for us, groom us by incremental exposure. Before we know it, one day we wake up to find that the parameters of normality have gone, that we are living in what can best be described as weirdness, and that we have lost our sense of balance and all our habitual points of reference.
We adapt to suit, but all the while our conscious and subconscious are picking up a general sense of disquiet, compartmentalising events that we would never have accepted five years ago into a new box called ‘we have no choice but to accept this’ or another box called ‘it’s not so bad as long as we are making money’, or even a smaller box named ‘Come on, what’s wrong with a cabinet minister and the prime minister’s chief of staff setting up companies in Panama just days after coming to power?’
The ongoing combustion was inevitable. It was only a matter of what the trigger would be. Nobody imagined it would be this trigger, that there would be a whistle-blower. And the ongoing conflagration has now caused us to look back at the past year and wonder what on earth made us put up with such abusive behaviour, and so unquestioningly – a cabinet minister and the PM’s chief of staff setting up companies in Panama and trusts in New Zealand, expertly designed for secrecy, for obvious nefarious purposes, and the Prime Minister himself not only failing to sack them, but actually drawing them tighter to his side, defending them fiercely, making it clear in ways that we could not prove that he is in it with them – whatever ‘it’ is. But looking back, the single greatest insult was the unforgiveable brazenness of a prime minister lying, barefacedly, to the public he is there to serve and honour. It’s been a long, long time since Malta had a Prime Minister who thinks nothing of lying to the public, or who thinks of the public as a mass to be lied to for his own advantage. Not even Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici did it. The last one was Dom Mintoff, who brutalised society with his lies and manipulation of crowds.
I believe one of the worst moments was when the Prime Minister stood by his energy minister, Konrad Mizzi, and told the public – such blatant deceit – that he knew about Mizzi’s Panama company because he had listed it in his “draft declaration of assets for parliament”, which Muscat had seen. There were several lies there: there is no such thing as a draft declaration of assets; declarations of assets are not presented to the Prime Minister but to parliament, let alone in draft form; Mizzi didn’t want the Maltese authorities to know about his Panama company, which is exactly why he set it up in Panama, so obviously, he was never going to declare it to parliament and only did so because of the massive raid on Mossack Fonseca’s server in Panama, which led to the Panama Papers. The only part of this that was not a lie was when the Prime Minister said he knew about Mizzi’s Panama company. Of course, he knew – but not because he got a sneak preview of his man’s draft declaration of assets.
The story that began with three Panama companies and the discovery of who owns the third mysterious one is now growing into something bigger and more explosive still, as it has directed us to a bank set up after Muscat was elected prime minister, a bank which plays the pivotal role in all this. As the press goes after the bank, it is clear where this story will inevitably lead: to the discovery that, unable to conduct their transactions through proper banks, because of the stringent anti-money-laundering and know-your-client restrictions, they simply set up a bank of their own, to use as they please.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is determined to call a general election a year ahead of time, and instead of speculating about the exact date, we should all be asking why. The answer to that, I strongly suspect, is the biggest story yet – and we don’t know what it is.
Malta is now in a terrible mess, all its systems of government hijacked. Crisis does not begin to describe it. Put simply, if Muscat and his henchmen survive this, Malta will not.
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