The plan has failed.  The excitement of Labour winning their 55% of the vote is over and the chickens have come home to roost.  Castille is breached.

So greedy and arrogant are they though, that they continue to go with the fantasy and spew empty storylines that no one believes anymore.  If anyone is still listening.  Because if the taxi driver has seen the day of reckoning, then so must all those who have enabled this state of impunity, know that they cannot hold the fort anymore.

The fall comes from the man on the street and there is no escaping that.  Ministers Owen Bonnici, Edward Scicluna, Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat together with the inseparable Chief of Staff, Keith Schembri can think that they have the upper hand on the institutions, Repubblika and Occupy Justice and that they can go on with the sick pantomime of being the Salvation army of Malta but once the taxi driver has pointed a finger, their credibility and authority is completely gone and so should they be too.

They may have thought that secrets were going to remain secret and that most people, other than Daphne Caruana Galizia were fearful of going after the truth.  They were wrong.  True, there was much they controlled and lied about.  Also true, that they felt their secret and organized lodge of privileged members was secure and tight as a ship.  It got to their head even before they were elected in 2013.  So confident were they that secrets were buried and their grasp on power was unassailable, that they freaked out when leaks began to undermine their virgin image and an organized chaos ensued.

Those who still see Muscat, Schembri and Mizzi as saviour and master are having to grasp at straws to oppose the shout for them to go.  They will claim that the PM brought in the FBI to investigate the assassination of the journalist and gave the pardon to the middleman.  They can also comfort themselves with the idea that the PM, his family and his close Ministers were victims of the allegations made by Ms Caruana Galizia. 

The fact is that the taxi man is one of them, in the sense that he was a patron of the businessman Jorgen Fenech and was a person of interest to him and by extension, to the linked politicians.  Failing to make the connection between the impunity towards Mizzi and Schembri and Fenech’s 17 Black and the deposits of €5,000 a day into their Panama companies is simply mad.  There may be some in the Cabinet who cannot believe their luck, that there are still a sizeable number of Labourites who continue to pledge loyalty and are comfortable with crooks stealing from them and going to any length to ensure their plan is secure, but even they can see that that support is in vain.

No FBI or Interpol or Council of Europe, no journalists or writers were going to look at the foot soldier, the guy next door.  They could see where the investigation was heading but these organizations can be too big to reach the local underworld.  That is where Daphne was able to reach.  She had that skill of honing in on the most unlikely characters, following the clues and not failing to link behaviour to name and reputation. The international police also need the collaboration of the Maltese police and that can be quite a selective process.  Besides, it was all carefully managed and staged.

But this isn’t the Mafia (though close enough) where anyone caught snitching is sure to get a bullet to his head.  The only thing that Joseph Muscat could get out of the confession was to appear benevolent and magnanimous by granting the Presidential pardon and taking all the credit for it. He also continued to play the card of “no stone unturned” but before he knew very well which stone to turn and this time the worm came out from beneath the stone.

Dom Mintoff, when he lost the majority in the election of 1981, knew that there was a crisis of government.  It is the same again now.  At the time, most members of the Parliamentary group refused to call another election, as he had proposed.  This time, though, it is the duty and only saving action of the Labour parliamentarians to call on the Prime Minister to resign, together with Mizzi and Schembri.  Owen Bonnici should also follow as he has done and continues to do. Edward Scicluna, should understand that he needs to resign too.  After all, Electrogas is not the only scandal in the chest.  There is the Vitals contract, the MFSA, Pilatus bank and Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, the bank guarantees and loans for the power station deal, the Café Premier deal, the Zonqor and Cospicua sites promised to the AUM and all the public land that was handed over to the developers without right.  Also for the FIAU that tried to do its job but was sabotaged from doing so.  On the PMs side, we can elicit the allegations surrounding Neville Gafa’ and the Libyan visa scandal, the Nexia BT role in the setting up of the Panama companies, the night of the rabbit in Mgarr and the mysterious suitcases and the close contacts with Keith Schembri and Henley and Partners in the sale of citizenship and the Gaffarena deal for the property in Valletta. 

Finally, anyone in Parliament who voted in confidence of Konrad Mizzi knew very well that he had done the things he did, opening the Panama account and the New Zealand Trust and the link with 17 Black but they chose to side with him and protect him from accounting for his action.  The whole Labour Parliamentary group is complicit but we will have to allow this legislation to continue.  It is up to them to ensure the survival of the party and they can only do that by removing the mechanics, putting in a new administration and governing without corruption.

At the next election, let them compete fairly, without outside influence and hidden funding, as a free political party and on a manifesto that isn’t reversed the moment the banging begins on the Perspex of Ta’ Qali.  Let them remove the excesses of the canvassers and drivers and political media group of Muscat and reinstate the rule of law and rebuild the institutions as befits a democratic and free country.  Then the appointments of the judiciary should be revised and freedom of speech given the protection it needs.  And without justice for Daphne all would be just a pantomime again as is the freaky clearing of the memorial each night.  Like a child checking to see if the monster is under the bed before sleeping.  And they think they are modern!

Is it possible that no one in the Cabinet or Parliamentary Group can see what they must do?