This election campaign has been ground breaking for two reasons. First, there is the focus on energy provision and cost and, secondly, while every campaign brings with it allegations of sleaze, this time – so far – the allegations of sleaze have been tied up with the provision of electricity, thus bringing together the two poles of the campaign, at least from the PL point of view.

To date, the PN response has been to criticise and minimise the PL commitments on energy prices (only then to promise cheaper electricity at night) and then to defend in respect of the allegations of sleaze.

Prime Minister Gonzi was no doubt woken up last Sunday and told about the allegations in MaltaToday, called the Police Commissioner and ordered him to investigate. The Police Commissioner was already at his desk and had already ordered an investigation.

The person mentioned in the story was sent for and interrogated, as was the person who had been Enemalta chairman in the past. This person, reportedly, had to be taken to hospital. The other person was reportedly kept under interrogation but the statutory 48 hours passed and no one seems to know whether he has been released or was re-arrested as soon as he left Police HQ.

From what I am hearing, this allegation is only the beginning of much worse. There is a quantitative difference between the allegations made at the last election against a single MP late in the campaign, and this allegation and all that can come later.

This, and I have to choose my words carefully here, could even be a much bigger – and more extensive – scandal and could also involve not just individuals but what the Italians call ‘cordate’. Even worse, it could also involve people switching from a job with Enemalta to a job in the private sector, benefiting from the experience and contacts gained during their Enemalta stint, or setting up companies to offer services in that particular field, obviously made far simpler by the contacts made.

It is therefore, if it is confirmed, the well-known “revolving door” jape, about which there should be rules and all sorts of timelines.

I am thus vexed to see this sort of late and hurried investigation after all these years. Media research this past week has, after all, shown that allegations and questions were asked as far back as 2004, around the same time as the allegations that surfaced last Sunday. Did the police investigate then or are they investigating now only because they were ordered to do so by the Prime Minister, deep in the throes of an election campaign?

Some allegations years ago seem to have spurred the Commission against Corruption into an investigation that predictably led nowhere. The Commission has its own rules and also limitations but one would have thought that a state that respects itself, arms itself with far better weapons against sleaze than this.

With all the limitations they have, the police and the Investigation Service today have better weapons to use against crime. What is needed is a more proactive form of investigation, not under the pressure of an election but on a regular basis.

Look at the result of such inaction (or let us call it a lack of proper oversight) read with hindsight: Minister Austin Gatt’s words in Parliament to Leo Brincat in 2004 – that unless he had a sworn statement, he could not investigate further – sound hollow when a cheque from that period surfaces later on and at a time when it does great damage.

Part of the country will now believe that ministers who make such statements are hand-in-glove with the perpetrators, but maybe that is completely untrue. Ministers should be able to initiate investigations and ensure that they deliver results instead of the usual non-committal conclusions.

To be sure, there must be a reason why people are summarily removed from their post and replaced. Many times this is not because the minister did not like the colour of that person’s tie. Maybe, too, as seen in this particular story, a golden handshake is thought to silence all protests and remonstrations.

In the end, in this and similar allegations, it is the government of the day that is not just held responsible but actually is responsible.

For there are two dimensions from which to view such stories. On the one hand, there is the wide vision of the particular sector as a whole. Anyone looking out at the eastern horizon can see (you can see them better from a plane) many ships anchored off Malta, especially around Hurds Bank. Has no one ever asked what all those ships are doing and has the standard reply that they are sheltering from storms satisfied anybody?

It is also well known that there is a very florid bunkering business going on and there is a huge amount of traffic around there. Has any serious investigation ever been carried out? Some time ago, the country was said to be awash with contraband fuel: do you remember that case of a bad smell and no one could find the cause, and then it transpired that someone had a huge consignment of contraband fuel and was transferring it to barrels?

That is something that any government worth its salt should have investigated and not under the pressure of an election.

Then of course there is another dimension. Some people have been getting far too rich, far too quickly. Maybe some have been playing the pools or have won the lottery, but maybe again this is something else that should have been investigated.

There are two dimensions to comment on: firstly, this government, whether by design or by omission, has created certain gateways and the people in charge of them have become quite rich and powerful. That’s bad in itself and should have been examined closely.

Secondly, maybe these sudden riches should have alerted the government that something was amiss and that some funny business had been taking place under our (and its) noses.

But then the deployment of our law-enforcement officers is skewed all wrong: if you go to Court, half the country’s police force is there, standing idly about, waiting to be called and wasting its time, and all the others, such as the local wardens, seem to care about is parking infractions or using a mobile phone while driving: two bad habits, especially the last one, but there are far weightier issues.

What it all amounts to is that, just a month before an election, you get many people, far beyond the extent of the party in Opposition, believing that it simply cannot be that the ministers, the Cabinet, just did not have any idea what seems to have been going on. You get many people, and that includes government supporters, who state that the ministers must have somehow been in on it.

Now I know we have all sorts of declarations of interest tabled in the House every year, but I would ask who believes them? (As much as anybody will believe the election expenses declarations in two months’ time).

On this issue, then, the Cabinet’s awful mistake of giving itself a €500 a week rise and telling nobody about it, while it was lamely defended as helping the ministers cope with the stresses of being a minister, could also be perceived – and in fact it was – as showing a grasping mentality to get as much as they could while the going was good.

There was simply no oversight and you ask yourself whether Lawrence Gonzi has realised that he is the PM and no longer a minister like the others. From what we can see, he did his job and let the others do theirs – whereas he should have been the one with the wide vision and the oversight.

So now we have all this confusion about the issues around which this election is centred. There is this awful confusion that, just because (and I add, only if it is confirmed) there were kickbacks, then it proves that keeping fuel oil as the mainstay of our electricity generation must have derived from the sleaze in the case. There were, and still are, perfectly valid reasons why, at this stage of our national development, fuel oil has to serve as the basis of our electricity generation – at least until the interconnector is up and running, until we have enough solar energy (or wind) provision and until, why not, we can convert to gas.

The second mistake, as I see it, is that this story, once again if proved to be true, is piling credit on the PL proposal which, as I have been saying these past few weeks, was not necessary for the PL campaign, has many dubious points regarding delivery and has additionally been saddled with a timeline that far better experts than I think will be impossible to achieve.

But the main thing, as I hope I have been making clear today, is that a government that respects itself should have been far more proactive about such widespread allegations than this last-minute, panic-ridden investigative fervour.

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