The Nationalist Party was very late to the party when it came to nominating someone to sit on the Permanent Commission Against Corruption, but at least it got it right in the end.
The PN nominated John Rizzo, a career police officer who served for 39 years, twelve of which he spent as Police Commissioner.
While one cannot say that there were no controversies during his time as police chief, it is safe to say that Rizzo was the last serious police commissioner.
The people that came after him, all approved and then removed by the current Labour administration, were deemed to be unfit for the post and the political appointments served only to dent the credibility of the force.
This newspaper was among the first to chastise the Nationalist Party, and its leader Adrian Delia, for taking so long to nominate someone to the anti-corruption commission. It seemed ironic that the commission could not function because of the delay caused by the PN, which puts corruption so high on the agenda. The situation was getting so out of hand that Partit Demokratiku stepped in and nominated former Air Malta chairman Philip Micallef, only to have its nominee rejected over a technicality.
Now the PN has chosen, and it has chosen well. One now hopes that the Permanent Commission Against Corruption hits the ground running and makes up for lost time.
But we fear that its work may prove more difficult than it could be.
Because at the other end of the spectrum is a government that brushes away claims – and even proof – of corruption as if it was nothing. Just last week we saw how Prime Minister Joseph Muscat casually dismissed the conclusions of a report drawn up by a European Parliament rule of law delegation.
Muscat, who insists that the MEPs had already decided what they were going to write before they even set foot on Malta, told the MEPs that he would not take instructions on who to remove and who to keep at his side. The EP delegation had of course asked the PM, once more, to remove Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri from office.
The report had also demanded that the two close allies of the PM, who had famously been caught with secrete companies in Panama, for which their intermediary had sought to open bank accounts, should also be duly investigated.
The MEPs, who spoke to the Attorney General, the Commissioner of Police and the Chief Justice, also confirmed that despite FIAU reports pointing to corruption, the police did not lift a finger. Neither did the AG who, in terms of the anti-money laundering act, could have requested a police investigation.
If anything, this latest report went to show how this government laughs off serious claims of corruption and sweeps everything under the carpet. As usual, the government and the PL (is there a difference between the two?) have resorted to their usual two-pronged tactic; On the one hand they dismiss all claims of wrongdoing by changing topic and speaking about the economy, Air Malta and foreign investment. On the other hand they try their utmost to discredit those making the most serious claims.
In this case, they are trying, once again, to discredit the Russian whistleblower, Maria Efimova, after it emerged that she was not Daphne’s original source.
The PL/government is interpreting this to mean that Efimova lied and that Daphne had no real source when in reality it means, as we had always suspected, that Daphne had more than one source in the Egrant case, and Efimova was used to corroborate information that had already been obtained from elsewhere.
While the veracity of the Egrant story can be debated, other more concrete documents, such as the FIAU reports, cannot.
We expect the Prime Minister to show more respect for such an institution as the European Parliament, especially when faced with such a damning report.
Because if the government has no intention of showing humility and taking action in the face of such a report by the EP, there is no reason to believe that it would act differently were a similar case to be brought before it by Malta’s commission against corruption?