There is no doubt that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is not at ease with the way he has dealt with Godfrey Farrugia, who is now being branded by the Labour campaign machine a traitor and defector. Such labels do no justice to the truth behind Godfrey Farrugia’s defection. Eventually Labour will be haunted by this.  

I am sure that Godfrey Farrugia had no wish  to cause harm or political damage to the Labour Party. The same holds for his partner Marlene Farrugia. Both could never have conjectured that four years on, following Labour electoral victory in 2013, they would have found themselves in an alliance with the Nationalist Party. Until a few weeks ago, the Nationalists were Godfrey Farrugia’s prime political opponents. In fact, when Godfrey Farrugia was removed as Health Minister, he refused any other ministerial positions offered to him. He was Whip for Labour’s Parliamentary Group and I am sure that he executed his job with great honesty and rectitude. I know for a fact that when problems started becoming more charged between his partner Marlene Farrugia and the Labour Party, out of loyalty to the Labour Party, he wanted to move out of politics, however, he remained in the Labour Party so as not to harm his Party by resigning. Normally, such resignations have a negative effect on the party concerned. He also considered not contesting this election. Something happened in the process that  made Godfrey Farrugia change his mind. I am sure that Godfrey Farrugia was so offended by Labour’s behaviour that he decided to follow in his partner’s footsteps and became a candidate of her new party. He is now contesting this election in coalition with the Party that, until yesterday, was his political arch rival.

From a historian’s point of view, there is integrity in Godfrey Farrugia’s and Marlene Farrugia’s political behaviour. I wish to remind readers that these two politicians were the first to come under fire from the English-speaking media immediately after Labour was voted in, in  2013 and they were the first Labour MPs to be harshly criticised in the press. Perhaps, few today remember that Marlene Farrugia had decided to back Godfrey Farrugia in his work as Minister of Health. She took the unofficial and unpaid role of  personal aide to the minister. It is not my intention to go into the matter whether this was ethical or not. Nevertheless, as a result of the controversy, Marlene Farrugia had to relinquish her post.

This episode becomes extremely relevant today, since the Nationalist Party has revealed that Adrian Hillman was receiving money from Keith Schembri, allegedly in order to determine the editorial policies of The Times of Malta. I wish to remind readers that when I spoke about these facts some time ago, I was accused of formulating conspiracy theories. Now, it is the same Nationalist Party that is confirming that what I had been stating is the truth. Am I right to conclude that this attack, on Godfrey Farrugia and his partner Marlene, was orchestrated by Castile? Uncontestably, the relationship between Adrian Hillman and Keith Schembri was still very strong at the time of this controversy.  Was it a fact that there were senior  individuals in Castile who  were not happy with Dr. Godfrey Farrugia as Minister of Health, because Godfrey Farrugia was and is an honest man? Does this explain why a relatively innocuous decision by a Labour deputy to sit next to her partner, became a scandalous affair?

We next have the episode of setting up a tent outside Mater Dei Hospital. This led to another media controversy which provoked the sacking of  the Minister, though the Prime Minister’s chief of staff was kept in his position for far graver mistakes.

The Nationalist Party has revealed a story of alleged bribes between Hillman and Schembri. I believe that the public has a right to be informed about this whole issue. Furthermore, I also expect the newspaper in question to practice what it preaches and become more transparent and publish the findings of its internal inquiry. The Times of Malta is owned by the Allied Newspapers; a private company, but the newspaper needs to lead by example. It cannot attack Government for lacking in transparency when it too behaves in the same fashion. The fact is that Adrian Hillman is in the news again for the wrong reasons. The need for transparency becomes even more pressing if there is a link between the way Godfrey Farrugia was dealt with by the Times of Malta and Castille. In this particular case, the electorate has a right to know whether the reports published against Marlene Farrugia and Godfrey Farrugia after the Labour victory of 2013, were instigated by pure journalism or whether they were the result of a smear campaign.

The truth is that it was thanks to Godfrey Farrugia’s work that the problem of lack of beds in hospital started being tackled efficiently. He also tackled the shortage in medicines. However, as usually happens in politics, the laurels were reaped by others. Chris Fearne is claiming that this success is due to his work, while taking the liberty of making indirect digs at Godfrey. But in reality, under Fearne, the bed shortage problem was not solved. What we have are patients still needing hospitalization  being dismissed so that a bed becomes available. In some cases, patients have had to be re-admitted with urgency. There have been cases of patients dying because they were not kept for further observation in hospital, particularly if they were over a certain age.  This is all happening so that no patient is kept in hospital corridors, thus sparing the minister concerned any criticism similar to what  Joe Cassar had received. Yet, no one speaks out that patients who need more time in hospital are literally being kicked out. I hope that the media is not  refraining from commenting on all this because no one is paying kickbacks to destroy the credibility of honest politicians.  

At Tarxien, Muscat spoke about a new Malta. A Malta no longer made up of Nationalists and Labourites; a nation not constituted by two different political poles or tribes. Is it not this that Marlene Farrugia and Godfrey Farrugia want to achieve by a coalition with the Nationalist Party without denying their historical roots? 

 Contrary to what the Labour Party media is stating, Godfrey Farrugia and Marlene Farrugia are not traitors. They did not defect because they were offered lucrative positions by the Nationalists. Nor did they leave  because they do not agree with historic Labour ideals. Marlene Farrugia and Godfrey Farrugia have no problem in defending Labour principles, even at Nationalist Party gatherings. They have already left their mark. Both Marlene and Godfrey speak with admiration for Dom Mintoff and I am sure that it is due to this coalition that the Nationalist Party has started to re-evaluate the impact  of this politician. In this electoral campaign, the PN Leader had to change the Party’s  political rethoric and had to abandon the past vitriolic statements against Mintoff. Now a number of Nationalists MPs are declaring words of admiration for the greatest Maltese politician of the twentieth century.  

Both Marlene and Godfrey had to leave Labour because they are honest politicians. Definitely they are not phoneys as some of the speakers enrolled by the Nationalist Party to defend the Nationalist cause are.  I was appalled to listen to one particular speaker, who attacked Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi because he is choosing Malta and yet he is indirectly listed in the Panama Papers! Both Marlene and Godfrey had to defect because they realized that there was no more space for them within Labour. They have applied what the German Socialist politician of the 1970s, Willy Brandt coined as realpolitik  based on practical objectives of a politics of adaptation. They know that without a coalition, their structure had no chance of survival in our political system of the single transferrable vote. Their presence in parliament is a guarantee of honesty and integrity in Maltese politics.