A top surgeon who is also a Nationalist Party candidate has written to former UK premier Toni Blair to express his shock and disappointment that the latter endorsed PM Muscat during a Labour Party mass meeting on Sunday.
In the letter, which he also posted on Facebook, Kevin Cassar said Blair’s endorsement “of Dr Joseph Muscat drags you down with Dr Muscat's inner core into a world where evil is rewarded”.
This is the full letter:
Letter to Tony Blair, former U.K. Prime minster
Dear Mr Blair
I was shocked and disappointed to see your message of endorsement for Joseph Muscat.
Joseph Muscat is currently being investigated by a magistrate for serious allegations that his wife owns a Panamanian company as well as having received huge sums of money from Mr Aliyev's daughter.
His cabinet minister Konrad Mizzi has been exposed in the Panama papers as owning a Panamian offshore company and has been incriminated in kickbacks in the sale of the national energy company Enemalta.
His chief of staff Keith Schembri is currently being investigated by two magistrates on two different cases of money laundering.
Three different reports of the local agency against money laundering implicate Joseph Muscat's chief of staff Keith Schembri and his cabinet minister Konrad Mizzi as well as his consultant Brian Tonna who is the local representative of Mossack Fonseca in serious criminal activities.
In addition the police force which is responsible for acting on these reports is led by Dr Muscat's appointee and has failed to even investigate let alone prosecute these people.
The two main independent newspapers in our country, the Times and the Independent have published damning editorials only today on Dr Muscat's government and the choice facing the Maltese people.
It is simply a choice for ending 4 uninterrupted years of organized crime at the highest institutions of this country with the knowledge and likely involvement of the prime minister himself.
Your endorsement of Dr Joseph Muscat drags you down with Dr Muscat's inner core into a world where evil is rewarded. There is nothing progressive in a government that intimidates the free press, arrests editors of newspapers who dare expose his crimes, sues a Pulitzer winning journalist, employs an official in his office whose sole function is to harass and humiliate anybody who opposes the government, whose chief of staff pays the managing director of one of the main newspapers (the Times) hundreds of thousands of euro in dirty money.
You may not have been fully briefed about the dire situation we find ourselves in here in Malta. Our very democracy is seriously threatened. Our free press is constantly harassed, our police force is led by a stooge of the government and fails to act in the face of serious allegations of crime but prosecutes whistleblowers, our judiciary has been populated by Labour Party stalwarts including candidates and the most recent deputy leader, the army is led by a personal and family friend of the prime minister who was promoted several times in a few weeks against all the rules to be made head of the army.
We have become in 4 short years closer to a repressive autocratic regime then a free European Union member state.
I lived and worked in Scotland between 1998 and 2007 in the NHS and at the time admired you for what you achieved for your country. Today I have lost that respect. You have been misled.
Corruption and criminality by politicians can never be condoned - let alone endorsed.
I trust that you will inform yourself about the man you have endorsed and the potential further damage he will bring to this country should he be re-elected.
I would hate to think that I had even the tiniest part in bringing that about if I were you.
Yours sincerely
Professor Kevin Cassar