For the first time in this otherwise divisive general election campaign, we saw some unity between the two main political parties yesterday.

Both the Nationalist and Labour parties are in agreement that the Malta Files released early yesterday morning present a clear and present danger to the country’s coveted and hard-earned reputation in the financial services sector.

Both agree that the country’s reputation needs to be safeguarded and that this is one issue that certainly must not be politicised.

Both agree that the accusations being made in dozens of articles across Europe and elsewhere are not exactly portraying an accurate picture of the situation.

That, however, is where the unity stops but it is at least a good start.

The stories doing the rounds in several reputable newspapers are portraying Malta as a tax and offshore haven and some imply that there is some kind of illegality thriving on these isles as far as its taxation system. This is, however, far from the truth. 

Such international news does Malta’s image as a financial centre of excellence with a robust regulatory regime no good at all, quite the opposite in fact. Malta had spent years carefully building that reputation, which is being called increasingly into question. 

It should be stressed that although it is widely disputed, Malta’s tax imputation system is fully endorsed by the European Union and the OECD and it is perfectly legal and legitimate. So is the business of the payday loan billionaire who features in those articles, who is seen fleecing his customers and in return paying a very low rate of taxation by locating part of his corporate structure here in Malta.

The billionaire’s business model may be amoral, but it is legal.

Moreover, this individual is by far not the only person or corporation that has been using Malta for its low tax rates. There are several such instances, many of which have been reported by this newspaper and others over the years.

There have been numerous efforts far and wide to force a change to this system employed by Malta, all of which have been unsuccessful for the very reason that there is nothing illegal about it – contentious in that it deprives other states of taxation revenue, but perfectly above board.

But perhaps the more pertinent question that should be asked is why Malta has been placed under the microscope.

One obvious answer is that Malta currently holds the EU Presidency and given Malta’s very advantageous and zealously guarded tax system, many see little will on the part of Malta to continue to push through EU tax reforms.

The other more glaring reason for having been placed under the microscope is the long shadow that the Panama Papers has cast on the country. The country has had, after all, the only serving EU minister and Prime Minister’s chief of staff implicated in this global scandal of epic proportions.

And yes, the government must be held to blame for the continual spotlight being cast on Malta when it comes to issues of tax avoidance, tax evasion and money laundering. It must also be said that the spotlight’s glare wouldn’t have been quite so bright had the Prime Minister taken the action he should have taken over a year ago, action that many in this country had hoped he would have taken – hope not necessarily driven by political motives but in the interest of safeguarding the country from calamities such as those it is suffering at the moment.

If the Prime Minister had shown a no-nonsense attitude and, in the national interest, cut loose that minister and chief of staff at the first whiff of scandal, matters may not have come to such a head. He would have shown that the country is serious and the peril that the country’s financial services sector now finds itself may have been mitigated.

That is what should have been in the national interest, and that is what a leader, as opposed to a person who simply happens to be in power, would have done.

The Prime Minister’s utter reluctance to deal with the situation, to have bitten the bullet and instructed his right and left hand men implicated in the Panama Papers to fall on their swords has played no small part in the situation in which the country now finds itself.

Instead, matters have spiralled almost out of control. The Prime Minister may have felt he could have handled the situation as far as the national point of view and popularity stakes are concerned, but he has been grossly mistaken in thinking this situation was to be forever contained within Malta’s shores.

If he did think that, he must certainly not be thinking that now. The weight of the European Parliament’s PANA Committee continues to press down on the country. International banks are shying away from doing business in Malta, as are, if rumours prove true, other serious financial services providers and the contagion factor of the Panama Papers has now hit him personally, so much so that he has had to call an early election.

What the Prime Minister did, out of sheer hard-headedness or otherwise, was to have effectively gambled the national interest for the sake of retaining his minister and chief of staff.

One does not simply gamble with the national interest in such a way; to have done so was utterly irresponsible.

This was certainly not worth the gamble.