Joseph Muscat pounced at the opportunity to tell the country that he feels like he is watching the same movie all over again. Of course he was referring to the PN leadership contest that is unfolding into a comedy of errors for everyone to see. Muscat, trained in the media, scents an opportunity that can help him push his narrative whenever it arises. The second landslide victory, four if you count the last two MEP elections fought under his stewardship, was not enough to give him comfort that the stories relating to his and his wife’s involvement in a Panama registered company would eventually go away. He knows only too well that the magistrate’s inquiry is bound to be concluded and he also knows that a lot of the evidence presented to the magistrate rests on the credibility of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. So it follows that he uses the PN leadership crisis as proof that what Caruana Galizia writes cannot be taken seriously.
Coincidently, or maybe not, Maltatoday’s managing editor and TVM current affairs presenter Saviour Balzan wrote last Sunday, the day Muscat linked the PN leadership contest with the Egrant allegations, that it was high time that Magistrate Aaron Bugeja concludes his inquiry. This was clearly an attempt to put more pressure on the magistrate. Coincidently, or maybe not, last week a ONE news journalist asked PN leadership hopeful Adrian Delia if he believes Daphne Carunana Galizia’s revelations on Egrant. Caught with his back to the wall, Delia tried to wing it by saying that he cannot believe what he didn’t see with his own eyes but expects the authorities to do their job. That was enough for Joseph Muscat and his apologists to pounce at the opportunity and spin the idea that if Caruana Galizia is lying on Delia than she must have lied on Egrant.
However, the two stories are far off from being close to each other as much as China is geographically away from Malta. Egrant is a company opened by the Prime Minister’s consultant Brian Tonna. Along with Egrant, Tonna opened in Panama two other companies, with the beneficiary owners being Keith Schembri, who is the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, and Konrad Mizzi, a Minister in Muscat’s cabinet and a close friend. Once the Panama Papers revealed this connection, Joseph Muscat should have acted by sacking his closest aides embroiled in this scandal and later resigned as well. Egrant is not about its beneficiary owner as much as it is about a corrupt scheme of kickbacks.
Adrian Delia’s saga, as serious as it is, is a totally different creature. Delia is not a politically exposed person like the Prime Minister and his two close aides. Though Delia is vying for a constitutional appointment, whatever happened with his clients back in 1999 can never be equated to the Egrant scandal, which was conceived a few days after Labour won the 2013 election, as Joseph Muscat is trying to have us think.
The PN, albeit in shambles, needs to figure out how to get out of this crisis it itself created. It may ask Delia to drop his candidacy, it may postpone the process to God knows when or it may trail till Saturday hoping that its councillors sort out the mess. Yet, it cannot let Jospeh Muscat ride on the PN’s internal fighting to launder his own dirty linen.