As I sit at my desk trying to keep up with what has been going on in court and attempting (sometimes, without much success) to make sense of it, I find myself wondering in disbelief, asking: Who do they think they're kidding? Do they think we're that stupid?
It’s not merely the fact that our intelligence is being insulted on a daily basis, but the incredulity that they actually do get away with it. This can only mean they know that most of the electorate will believe anything they say. They will not ask why or how. They will take in all the lies spewed by the psychopaths that have taken over public life in Malta, the likes of Keith Schembri, Joseph Muscat and assorted members of the Cabinet and Parliament.
Don’t you believe me? Just look at the polls, at the violent defence of the ‘leader’ on Facebook and the sizeable crowds the Muscats are attracting on their Evita-style farewell tour.
On 3 December we heard that Joseph Muscat had told the EP delegation that he feels betrayed by his chief of staff, Keith Schembri. ‘Betrayed’. What a word to choose. Betrayal implies that your associate (‘best friend’, in the case of Keith and Joseph) goes behind your back and, in secrecy, agrees to arrangements that are to your detriment, with you only realising too late.
But Keith Schembri did not go behind the Prime Minister’s back: he sat beside Joseph Muscat at every security service briefing. He ran his operations from a desk a few metres away from that of the Prime Minister. He invited Melvin Theuma to the OPM in broad daylight to show him around and arrange for his phantom job. They spent the night before Schembri’s arrest together at Muscat’s palatial abode.
And Joseph Muscat wants us to believe that he never had any knowledge or, at least, a slight suspicion of what his best friend chief-of-staff Schembri was up to?
What happened next was more suspect, but at the same time their tactics became clearer. On that same day, in the evening, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici told the media how he also felt betrayed. On Sunday, 15th, it was Chris Fearne’s turn. Over the same period Super One went into overdrive discrediting Yorgen Fenech, now the prime suspect in masterminding the bombing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. And there you had it. Tell the growing masses of people enraged by what has happened that, yes, Keith Schembri was involved and in being so he betrayed Joseph Muscat. To swathes of adulating Labourites, it was all Yorgen Fenech’s fault.
It seems to me that they have an arsenal of cliché soundbites they churn out when things go wrong. First there were “fully-costed” and “roadmap”. Then there was Konrad’s favourite: “above-board”. Michelle’s mantra remains, of course, that she and her husband are ‘sereni’, when his body language, facial expressions and worrying sudden weight-loss evidently show inconsolable rage and frustration.
Some of you would say that being good with words is what makes a good politician. I beg to differ. A good politician is a good person with integrity who has the skills to introduce and improve policies for the common good. Unfortunately, we only have a handful of them in our Parliament. When you observe the members of government, and process what they say, you conclude that goodness and integrity do not seem to count for very much to those who represent us.
Members of the government went out on a Christmas ‘do’ and uploaded a photograph on Facebook showing off how ‘sereni’ they are. They took with them former Minister Konrad Mizzi who, we have just learnt, was planning to set up a company to sell Maltese ID cards to Chinese people. The company was to be registered in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore jurisdiction which, like Panama, offers secrecy to the super-rich. Both Keith Schembri and Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna were involved in this MACHIN Project. According to Mizzi, the project was not pursued. Probably no more money needed machin' washin'.
They uploaded a similar photo a few days before from Parliament while hundreds of protestors were calling for Muscat’s resignation from a heavily barricaded Freedom Square.
Earlier on in – and throughout – this piece, I referred to Schembri as Chief of Staff. Truth be told, he resigned from his post in the Prime Minister’s office on 25 November. However, I believe that as long as Joseph Muscat remains Prime Minister, Schembri will find a way of manipulating the investigation further. He is currently being investigated for homicide and tampering with evidence.
Schembri was first arrested on 9 November. On Thursday, 19 November, we learnt that his office and items therein were seized by the Police. Electronics from his house were also taken into Police possession. In this same hearing, we also learnt how Keith Schembri lost his phone. Yes, the businessman who runs several businesses, (most of us have stopped counting), who “is always on his phone” and who, by his own admission, has to recharge it four times a day and was photographed being carted off to court with one in his left hand, lost his phone and has not tried to get a new one since. To add insult to injury, Inspector Arnaud did not clarify if the Police are trying to locate this elusive piece of electronics. If they were capable of retrieving the Degiorgio brothers’ mobiles from the Marsa seabed, how can Arnaud tell us with a straight face “he told us he lost it”?
If we do not keep watch, they will keep doing what they have mastered: deceiving the general public, calling themselves ‘political victims’ and feeding on the generous compliments from an audience who was never taught how to stand tall against corrupt power.
We must stay vigilant.