“First you defended Rosianne Cutajar, now she’s gone. What changed?”, Robert Abela was asked. “It was a consistent message”, he replied, “my position in her regard was clear from the very start”.

But Abela’s clear message was “Rosianne Cutajar paid the price….and should not pay the price a second time”. Days later he declared “Nobody is bigger than the party”.  “While I have not yet spoken to Rosianne Cutajar directly, the message of the prime minister does not need to be communicated in a face-to-face meeting. That message arrived”.

It seems not. Cutajar didn’t budge. For days she left Abela on tenterhooks.  Just minutes before Labour’s joint parliamentary group-executive meeting, Rosianne Cutajar announced she would no longer remain a Labour MP - but kept her parliamentary seat.

Abela is swiftly turning into Labour’s leading liability. He’s no leader. He simply does what he thinks will win him most approval. Or what loses him least support. Except that he can’t read the mood. And keeps getting it wrong, and then swiftly has to take a diametrically opposite direction. He’s just a laughing stock. “My position was clear from the start” - has become a hilarious meme. It’s also demonstrably untrue.

“If there is anybody who stood up to Steward in the last 3 years it was I”, Abela bluffed. That was nakedly false too. Steward missed all the concession milestones. No St Luke’s refurbishment, no Karin Grech upgrade, no new Gozo hospital. Abela could have declared these non-rectifiable concessionaire events of default and end the concession. He didn’t. He paid them hundreds of millions. That’s not standing up to Steward. That’s throwing in the towel.

Abela lied about many things. Brazenly. He claimed he was completely transparent about the hospitals concession. Yet he resisted the Ombudsman’s repeated requests to hand over the unredacted hospital contracts.  The Ombudsman’s report noted “another year has passed and copies of the contracts have still not been made available”.

We know he’s being dishonest - by stating falsehoods, concealing facts and distorting the truth. The question is whether we can forgive him.

In the minds of many, the answer must be no. Labour is already asking itself whether Abela is still such a winner. The blow of recent surveys has hit home. Do the Maltese people still love him so much that they forget all his whoppers and move on?

The Muscat vultures have started to circle as Abela stumbles.  From his inconsistency on the hospitals saga to his misguided defence of Rosianne Cutajar, Abela looks like a wounded beast staggering dangerously. As party heavyweights Alfred Sant, Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca and Desmond Zammit Marmara pummel Abela’s lurch into the hands of greedy businessmen, his authority crumbles.

Party loyalists exclaim in disbelief, do we have to go on with all this nonsense?

Whatever their political convictions, most are incensed by revelations in the court’s hospitals judgement.  They’re appalled at the shocking details in Rosianne Cutajar’s chats.  They’re alarmed at Abela’s attempt to defend the indefensible. They’re disgusted at Abela’s wild lies.

A sense of decency in many Labour voters makes them balk at Cutajar’s shameless conduct, her sense of entitlement, and her declaration that she would make a pig of herself, like the rest did. Labour supporters realise she should never have been allowed to contest. She had no place in parliament. She disgraced the party. But it was Abela’s rotten judgement that let her contest. It was Abela’s idiocy that appointed her parliamentary health committee chair, social affairs committee chair and children’s council board member. Abela’s lunacy protected her from the Council of Europe’s condemnation.

Abela never learns. He did the same with Justyne Caruana. His judgement is abysmally flawed. He keeps getting important calls wrong. And then lying about them.

There is only one explanation.  He’s detached from his own grassroots who perceive him as a wealthy privileged pampered brat with no understanding of the challenges workers face - rising inflation, mounting debts, a drop in purchasing power and deteriorating quality of life.  Workers struggle to pay loans and feed their families, Abela trudges off to Marina di Ragusa aboard his luxury yacht.

Abela defended Rosianne Cutajar and her Hermes blazers, expensive perfumes and Bulgari bags. As patients were stacked into the hospital canteen or in an underground corridor, forced to use leaking mobile showers, Abela defended Steward.

Abela keeps lying that there’s no documentation about Joseph Muscat’s termination package which included 120,000 euro, use of an office, a laptop, printer, and two cars - one for his wife.

We’re in a critical moment for our country.  We must get away from all this.  We have to get back to a situation where whether you tell the truth or are a serial liar matters.

Robert Abela knows he’s lying. He knows we know too.  But he thinks, if he’s still winning, who cares? Many do, even Labour supporters.  They can’t stomach Abela’s cavalier attitude to the lies.   The man has no regard for the truth.

This is about the soul of the Labour party.  It’s about our Parliamentary democracy.  It’s about what sort of Malta we want to live in. 

Labour needs to find the courage to condemn the lies and secrecy.  Labour must distance itself from the sleaze. It needs to find the nerve to say enough is enough. It must weed out those who brought shame onto the party and the country - Ian Borg, Silvio Schembri, Anton Refalo, Owen Bonnici, Joseph Muscat, and Robert Abela.

We have to hope that the Muscat-Abela era will be perceived as a dreadful aberration.  Hopefully Labour will have the courage to acknowledge it too.  Labour is in a dangerous place.  Unless they realise that Robert Abela is Labour’s leading liability, they’re heading into another long period in the wilderness.