The court cases the Prime Minister has chosen to open in a bid to reverse the dirty deals struck with Mark Gaffarena on the now infamous Old Mint Street property are a little strange to say the least.
When the Prime Minister had told this newspaper last October that “I will get to the bottom of it [the Gaffarena case] and I will obviously reverse the deal if I find it to have been dishonest”, this was welcome news.
But that was before several other matters had come to light, and now that the court cases have been filed and more of the legal processes involved have come to light, one must wonder whether those court cases have been designed to fail or whether those cases are merely face-saving yet hollow gestures.
The real crux of the matter here is that the court cases filed by the Prime Minister to recoup the money and land awarded to Gaffarena for the now proven illicit expropriations at 36 Old Mint Street is that the Prime Minister, in his capacity as a Member of Parliament, has taken his very own government to court.
But not only that, he has also effectively taken himself to court since the Lands Department falls under his own ministerial portfolio – making him just as responsible for the actions of Michael Falzon as the latter was responsible for the actions of the people underneath him, or so he claims.
Added to that is the name of the Attorney General alongside that of the Prime Minister on the court case. What we have here is the very strange situation in which the Attorney General, like the Prime Minister himself, is effectively taking legal action against the state that he is duty bound to represent in such cases.
And in the process the Prime Minister may very well have painted himself into a corner.
The case is expected to be a lengthy and complicated one that could last for years on end and by the time it gets to appeals stage, the whole affair would have been by then well shrouded by the mists of time.
Then there is the matter of the two weights and two measures applied to the Gaffarena case and the Café Premier deal. In the Café Premier case the government said it had decided to settle on the €4 million figure, paid out from the public coffers, so as to avoid lengthy court proceedings.
But, on the other hand, in the Gaffarena case the government has decided to go the whole hog and take the matter to court. Was this a case of the Prime Minister having learnt from past mistakes? We do not think so, for the very reason that while the Gaffarena case has unfolded before the public and every detail of the case has been published in the media before the institution of a court case, in the Café Premier deal, we only learnt of the deal and the government’s reluctance to file a court case after the fact.
As far as the Gaffarena case is concerned, and considering how it unfolded in the glaring light of publicity, the Prime Minister had no other choice but to choose the route that he did. But in so doing it may end up losing more face than it was attempting to save.
Then there is the other matter of why the Prime Minister waited as long as he did to initiate any kind of action at all.
Instead of the real action that should have been taken at least six months ago, the country was treated to the charade of Michael Falzon falling on his sword, and claiming political frame ups and the like. But for his claims to hold water, he will have to produce evidence to this effect and not only unsubstantiated accusations as he did in a televised interview on Friday.
We were also treated to the seemingly stage-managed lockdown, freezing of transactions and police swoop on the Lands Department, two court cases filed by the Prime Minister to reverse the Gaffarena deals, the announcement that the Lands Department will be turned into an independent authority.
These gestures are all intended to portray a government and prime minister that is tackling the corruption uncovered at the Lands Department head-on. But the fact of the matter is that, with all its dillydallying the government has shown that it is weak in the face of corruption when it comes to its own, and too weak for these shambolic gestures to be taken seriously.
If it had wanted to be taken seriously, the government and the Prime Minister would have taken all the action they did over the last two weeks several months ago when he knew exactly what had transpired between the Lands Department and Gaffarena.
Dr Falzon should have stepped down or at least suspended himself from his post as soon as the Prime Minister knew he was so heavily implicated in the Gaffarena deal. The crackdown at the Lands Department should have been carried out from day one of the publication of the IAID report, and not several months down the line, during which time anyone at the department involved in any funny business would have had ample time to cover their tracks.