Addressing the European Parliament yesterday in a plenary session dealing with ‘the rule of law in Malta’, the Prime Minister cut straight to the point with his interpretation behind the calling of the debate.

The Prime Minister said he couldn’t help but note the ‘political narrative’ throughout yesterday’s proceedings, and posited that the debate itself was purely partisan in nature.

Dr Muscat, an alumnus of the European Parliament, ought to know better that that. He knows very well that Strasbourg and Brussels are not Valletta, he knows very well that the calling in of a Prime Minister of a member state to discuss the rule of law in his country is not a matter decided upon or taken too lightly.

He should also know that the debate was not a partisan one simply because MEPs took to task you and those close to you who were implicated in the Panama Papers.  If it was such a partisan debate, then why had MEPs not insisted that it be held before the election and not after?

He must also know all too well that Malta has been hauled over the hot coals time and time again for the very raison d’être behind yesterday’s debate: the implication of his own chief of staff and a lead minister in the Panama Papers, and the revelations of their financial machinations that many in the EP simply, and perhaps quite rightly, refuse to believe were merely a bit of innocuous financial family planning.

The majority of the Maltese electorate may have swallowed that one, they may have voted the minister back into power and not given two hoots about the reappointment of the chief of staff. But most of those taking the floor in Strasbourg yesterday afternoon were of a slightly different mindset, a mindset in which the ethics of public office are not tantamount to merely seeing how much you can get away with while in power before the public takes up pitchforks and torches.  That line, incidentally, is drawn in the sand of Strasbourg and Brussels in a very different place than it is in Valletta.

Some MEPs expressed perplexity at how the chief of staff and minister could have been reappointed after the election and after all that has come to pass, comments that the Prime Minister by and large chose to ignore yesterday save for having pointed out how a European People’s Party Commissioner had also been implicated in the Panama Papers. So there, he seemed to say.  But it was former Prime Minister Alfred Sant who, when taking the floor, encapsulated the Maltese government’s thinking when he retorted to a fellow MEP who asked him whether he agreed with the post-election appointment of the minister when he said, “The Prime Minister must respect the verdict of the people…I note that this has been done in this case too.”

No, Mr Prime Minister, you are not a slave to the people and you do not have to appoint ministers simply on the basis of votes. You should guide the people and serve as an example through your own behaviour, decisions and appointments.  And you have provided a very poor example indeed to the country, its people and your supporters with those unquestioned reappointments.

Much of yesterday’s debate was also used to lash out at Malta and to continuously call the country a tax haven given its low and advantageous corporate tax rate, which some MEPs said was costing Malta’s fellow EU member states up to €2 billion a year in lost tax revenue.  While MEPs may have a right to be concerned, such argumentation deviated from the main point at hand.  They should also know that the country’s beneficial tax rate, although contentious, has been approved by the EU and the OECD, and there are the appropriate fora to contest that.  Yesterday’s gathering was not exactly the time, nor the place.

At the end of the day, it was quite apparent that MEPs failed to do justice to the topic at hand, while the Prime Minister quite easily circumvented the real issues at hand.  He also failed to sufficiently defend against the Malta Files criticism, but this could have also been part of his calculated balancing act.

When all was said and done, yesterday’s anticipated plenary session failed to live up to its billing and it was, truth be told, a case of opportunity lost on both sides of the equation.