Instead of being investigated for his shortcomings during his tenure as police chief, Lawrence Cutajar obtained a three-year job with the government, Opposition Leader Adrian Delia said this afternoon.

Speaking in Gozo, Delia said hinted that there was some kind of arrangement between Cutajar and Prime Minister Robert Abela. Cutajar only accepted to resign from the post of police commissioner only after he had been assured that he would be getting something else instead.

So, rather than launching an investigation into Cutajar’s lack of action on corruption, he has been given a new job to be paid.

Delia said that the reform of the police should not extend only to the change in its chief. Thus week we came to learn that one of the police deputy commissioners, who was lead investigator in the Daphe Caruana Galizia assassination, had travelled twice with the man who is now accused of complicity in the murder.

Then testimony given by former FIAU chief Manfred Galdes in court this week was also shocking, Delia said. Galdes said that he had no confidence in any police officer, and when he had passed on FIAU reports on money laundering they had not been investigated.

Delia said that people who should be investigated, such as Karl Cini of Nexia BT, are still on the loose.

The PN leader said that the draft law presented by the PN on the way the police commissioner should be appointed – with a two-thirds parliamentary majority – had been praised by legal experts such as Kevin Aquilina and Giovanni Bonello. These same experts had said that what the government was proposing was more of the same and would still leave everything in the Prime Minister’s hands.

He said that it seems that whoever fails under Labour gets a promotion. Apart from Cutajar, Delia mentioned the newly-appointed Economy Minister Silvio Schembri. Under him as parliamentary secretary, Malta had tried to establish itself as a blockchain island, but this attempt had failed miserably.

Mario Cutajar, Delia said, was supposed to see that the public service functioned well and yet he had converted it into a recruitment agency for the Labour Party. The PN has called for his resignation, but the government has given him another task, that of secretary to the board of governance that was created recently.

The more you fail, the more you get promoted under Labour, Delia quipped.