Minister-of-all-things-except-good-governance Konrad Mizzi may be able to run away from the libel cases that he himself instituted, once the ball starts bouncing the wrong way for him in court. But he will not be able to hide forever from the nasty truths that are still to emerge through the courts thanks to the unending efforts of a few people.

Earlier this week Mizzi dropped another five libel cases he had imitated against Daphne |Caruana Galizia, Simon Busuttil and Beppe Fenech Adami over Panama Papers-related reportage and comments. This comes after he dropped another raft of libel cases dealing with the same subject matter a couple of weeks earlier.

Something is clearly not right with the formula being applied by Mizzi. Shouldn’t it be those who file libel cases who would want to see them through to the bitter end, and not the actual defendants who are short-changed by not seeing the cases against them through to fruition?

As matters stand, we should be taking Mizzi’s dropping his own libel cases as an admission of guilt. That is because one does not simply drop libel cases defending one’s honour and integrity and, in turn, that of the government of which he somehow, and for some strange reason, still forms part.

Mizzi claims he is dropping the cases because they were, in his own words, ‘distracting’ him from his important work of ‘delivering projects’. One finds such statements extremely difficult to believe. That is because, Mizzi, who professes his innocence so strongly, is surely more dogged by the long, long shadow of the Panama Papers than by having to show up in court every once in a while to supposedly set matters right.

He also cites the emotional and administrative toll such cases are having on him. One cannot merely institute libel proceedings to save face temporarily, only to turn around and retract them once things start going the wrong way.

Mizzi may be able to legally drop those cases, but the court of public opinion is of quite another opinion altogether. Technically speaking, he has not been found guilty in any court of law but failing to see these cases through after being accused of theft from the state of the highest order, but to any sane person’s mind his behaviour implies he is guilty as sin.

Mizzi says he is tired of ‘defending against baseless allegations and repelling slander’, but the problem is that in order to prove that any of it is baseless allegation or slander, one must go through the courts for such a ruling. According to Mizzi, we should just take his word for it. We are sorry, but things have gone way too far for that now.

Mizzi should, in actually fact, be hell bent on pursuing those cases to clear his name, and the fact that he has dropped these cases when he did speaks more than volumes.

But there is a bright side. Former Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil, who is spearheading the cases against Mizzi, has vowed to fight on, and fighting on he is. On Friday, he filed a 77-page court application arguing that Malta’s institutions had ‘flagrantly and consistently’ failed to act against Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri. He contended that the country’s ‘institutional paralysis’ over the Panama Papers scandal has breached the Treaty of the European Union and the EU Charter on Fundamental Human Rights, as well as domestic law and the EU’s anti-money laundering directives.

We could not concur more heartily with that assessment.

The application claims that incontrovertible evidence of the crimes still exists in the form of paper trails, electronic correspondence which is found on computers and servers in several offices in Malta, perhaps even on computers at this office, which was a Panama Papers partner. Other documents include Know Your Client (KYC) forms relating to Mizzi’s and Schembri’s New Zealand trusts, copies of bearer certificates for Hearnville and Egrant Inc. and a report by the FIAU on Mizzi, concluding that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that he committed or attempted to carry out money laundering.

This, it must be stressed, is not a waste of the courts’ time; it is a bid to no longer waste the courts’ time with Mizzi’s and Schembri’s ploys to evade justice. It is a bid not to let these slippery characters get away with their wheelings and dealings being conducted on our behalf at our expense on so many levels.

Konrad, you can run but you cannot hide. The likes of Simon Busuttil, the new NGOs demanding justice, the independent media and the numerous pressure groups and civic-minded citizens are not going to let you go or get away with it. Perhaps it would be better to let those cases be heard; at least you will be able to argue at the end of the day that it is the law which is an ass, and not you.