The Prime Minister has made it perfectly clear that he is standing by his Head of Secretariat Edgar Galea Curmi and his decision to call the Police Commissioner with respect to the arrest of Chris Engerer earlier this month.

Asked for his opinion on the tenability of Mr Galea Curmi’s position after numerous calls for his resignation this week, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi was unequivocal in his assessment of the situation.

He tells The Malta Independent on Sunday, “I would sack the Head of Secretariat the day I learn that in front of an accusation of abuse of power by the police, he does not take immediate action and phone the Commissioner of Police asking for an explanation.”

Dr Gonzi adds, “It was his duty to act immediately on the slightest hint that the police were politically motivated in their actions.”

The pronouncement puts to rest a week of speculation on Dr Gonzi’s position as regards this particular facet of the now infamous and multifaceted Engerer affair. It still remains to be seen how the statement will be greeted by those baying for Mr Galea Curmi’s blood, in a controversy that has ranged from the serious to the farcical over this last week.

In a nutshell, on 15 July Sliema deputy mayor Cyrus Engerer, embittered by the Prime Minister’s vote against the divorce bill in Parliament, resigned from the Nationalist Party and declared his intention to move over to the Labour Party.

Six days later, on 21 July, his father Chris Engerer was arrested outside his home where he was found smoking a joint and in possession of five grams of cannabis. Police officers had first sought him out at his bar in Sliema and proceeded to his home when they did not find him there.

The police commissioner said in a press conference this week that a tip off about Chris Engerer had been received on 6 July but had not been investigated immediately because of other priorities. During his arrest Chris Engerer claimed he was being targeted because of his son’s defection to the Labour Party.

The next day, on 22 July, Cyrus Engerer asks Edgar Galea Curmi, his godfather, to speak to him about his father’s arrest, and repeats the claim of a political motivation behind his father’s arrest stemming from his own political controversy.

Mr Galea Curmi, there and then and before Cyrus Engerer, called Police Commissioner John Rizzo to inform him of the alleged political motivation behind the arrest and to ask him to quell suspicions along such lines that were being expressed by Chris Engerer’s lawyer Carlo Bizazza.

It is the correctness of that phone call that is now being called into question. Mr Galea Curmi and the Prime Minister insist he had been duty bound to make that call, but others have cried foul and have branded it a case of government interference in police operations.

In a separate case, the police filed charges against Cyrus Engerer last Monday. He stands accused of circulating pornographic images of his former boyfriend Marvic Camilleri by email, and of vilifying him in the process.

Mr Camilleri’s police report against Cyrus Engerer had been filed on 15 January of this year and had accused the latter of emailing pornographic images to Mr Camilleri’s employer, colleagues and friends.

Police Commissioner John Rizzo said this week the investigation had taken so long because of certain operational elements of the Cybercrime Unit and the fact that some data needed to be sent abroad for analysis.

He added that the investigating officer had also found it difficult to meet Cyrus Engerer because he was abroad a lot, and the police eventually interviewed him on 23 June. Cyrus Engerer is also said to have met the inspector in question on 9 July at the Gay Pride March in Valletta and asked him to speed up the case.

There are several question marks to the whole affair, not least of which is the curious timing of the charges against the Engerers and the resignation of Cyrus Engerer from the PN, and whether there had been any form of pressure, from any quarters, exerted on the police force in terms of the investigations and their timings.

A board of inquiry has been established to ascertain whether there had been any such influence in investigating father and/or son and whether there had been any negligence, non-observance of procedures or abuse of authority on the part of the Police Corps.