MEP hopeful Cyrus Engerer yesterday announced that he would not be contesting the MEP elections after an Appeals Court on Thursday gave him a suspended prison sentence for distributing pornographic material in an apparent ‘revenge porn’ attack on his ex-partner.

We will not go into the merits of the case, the court found him guilty and gave him a suspended prison term for the charges he was found guilty of. As soon as the ruling was made public, speculation was rife that the party would push for him to resign.

That did not happen, but yesterday morning at about 6.30am, Mr Engerer informed Prime Minister Joseph Muscat that he would not be contesting the European Parliament elections.

Mr Engerer said that he did not want an “unjust judgment in my regard to throw bad light on the Labour Party which is close to my heart, or on the Prime Minister in whom I have full confidence”.

Mr Engerer went on to say that he took the decision to withdraw from the election because he believes that politicians must lead by example on carry responsibilities.

This is all well and good, and Mr Engerer deserves respect for pulling out of the race and doing it for the right reasons. We have long harped on about the need for more accountability in Maltese politics and this is a case where the person in question has weighed up the situation and took the right decision both by himself, in relation to his party and in relation to the electorate in general. But we do feel that he should have stopped here and not gone on to have a whinge about the “real motives” behind the procedures against him. Mr Engerer did the right thing in stepping aside, but it should have been over there and then. One cannot know the full story of what went on, but it is not a case of what happened behind the scenes. It is just a case of doing what is right and moving on. Mr Engerer seems to have something to offer. He needs to get his head down and continue working within the PL and another chance will come.

Mr Engerer could have gone on to contest the election anyway due  to changes that were made to the law which allows for people serving a suspended sentence to contest elections. But that is another story entirely. We do hope that other politicians will follow Mr Engerer’s way of doing things should other situations arise. And we do not necessarily mean situations that are strictly in the eye of the law. It is just a simple case of accountability. If gross errors are made, then the people that commit them should just step aside, or at least, resign their post and prove their worth from the bottom up once more.