The acknowledgement by the Police Commissioner last night that, as matters currently stand, the police simply do not have enough evidence from the now infamous OLAF report to charge Malta’s former EU Commissioner John Dalli with anything is welcome news for the whole of the country, irrespective of anyone’s political stripe.

As a result of the accusations levelled against Mr Dalli, which have apparently been deemed too shaky for the police to formulate anything close to a concrete case against him, the country as a whole was shamed and its reputation was tarnished on a European and even a global scale.

Last October the Dalligate affair had made major European and international headlines and even now the case is still grabbing the headlines, although those headlines are now focusing on OLAF’s own alleged misdemeanours in relation to the case.

This is not solely an issue for the government that nominated him Commissioner, this is a national issue. If Mr Dalli is guilty as charged, there is a price that must be paid for such transgressions. But if he is cleared, at the end of the day there is quite another price to be paid by the European Commission.

And Mr Dalli said yesterday that he is leaving practically no stone unturned to clear his name before the Belgian and possibly the Maltese courts and in the process, he will, if successful, also clear Malta’s name.

OLAF had found what it described as “unambiguous circumstantial evidence” that Mr Dalli was aware that approaches were being made to influence the new tobacco directive and it says that at no point did he try to disassociate himself from or alert the Commission of what was taking place.

But the accusations were vague in that they did not pinpoint any wrongdoing on the part of Mr Dalli. As the Police Commissioner said last night, the OLAF report that led to Mr Dalli’s resignation “only gave an indication” that there was something wrong.

The Police Commissioner observed that the accusations made in the OLAF report, and the way in which the case had been investigated by OLAF, were administrative matters and that the level of proof required to press charges was completely different to those required of a criminal investigation.

One would have imagined that the bar for a Commissioner’s resignation would have been set much higher, especially in a case as sensitive as this one, in which the reputations of an EU Commissioner, the Commission itself and even that of a country has been dragged through the dirt.

Crime and punishment

The amnesty granted this week to prisoners in commemoration of the Labour Party’s election victory last March has been simultaneously greeted with shock and horror from some quarters and with applause from others.

And while, truth be told, the amnesty is far from unprecedented, the days of prisoner and in particular politically-motivated amnesties need to be brought to an abrupt end. If you’re prepared to do the crime, you must also be prepared to do the time, as the adage goes. 

But in this case the message that has been delivered is not one of justifiable mercy but, rather, one of politically-induced leniency on crime. Moreover, those amnesties were given out nearly three months after the fact.

It does not matter one iota that the current minister responsible for justice is a former criminal defence lawyer, and accusations that the amnesty has anything to do with his former clients are ridiculous. It is just a simple case of a bad decision and the fact that that paedophiles or prisoners serving life sentences have not been included makes it no better.

This government was elected on a platform of meritocracy and this 100-day amnesty is certainly not reflective of that in any way whatsoever.