Up until February of this year, the Prime Minister kept reiterating that the general election would take place in good time, more than once indicating that there was no year like 2018 for it to be in good time.

On 20th April, a month ago, the Russian whistleblower, an ex-Pilatus Bank employee, testified before the Magisterial Inquiry looking into allegations that the secret company Egrant's UBO is Michelle Muscat, the Prime Minister's wife.

On 1st May, less than a month ago, and less than two weeks after the Russian whistleblower gave evidence, the Prime Minister called the snap election, giving the electorate the shortest-ever campaign on these islands.

What made the Prime Minister go back on what he had been saying, with such insistence, for months? 

As the magistrate conducting the inquiry has made known, the inquiry is a very complex affair that will take quite some time to complete.

That such an Inquiry would take quite some time, was no doubt obvious, if not to the Prime Minister, certainly to his lawyers, well before the Prime Minister sent the whistleblower's allegations for magisterial scrutiny.

They would have pointed out to him that notwithstanding the time this Inquiry needed to run its full course, it might be concluded before June 2018, the latest the elections could be held.

So to avert the prospect of going to the polls after the inquiry was concluded and its findings made public, the Prime Minister called the snap election the shortest-ever campaign in Maltese history.

Now he is accusing Simon Busuttil with delaying tactics to prevent the Inquiry being concluded before the elections.

One can only hope that such see-through tactics will cost him heavily this 3 June.

 

Joe Genovese