If this country wasn’t in the dire circumstances it is in, we could easily win the award for the best farce in the universe.
Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri were for a time under arrest this week. Long overdue there. God knows how many godforsaken pieces of evidence have been dumped, flushed, deleted, totally expunged since the police had the first reports or whiffs of wrong-doing committed by the evil pair.
But this is Malta. And Malta has its unique rules and uniquely sickening rulers.
The strange coincidences are quite interesting. Or totally damning. Because, as life shows us, too many coincidences negate the theory of coincidences. You start detecting a pattern. A pattern that proves that it was not coincidence, but all planned. All part of the narrative to transform the truth into its own travesty.
The coincidences are various. The investigations and arrests by the police should have happened a long time ago. They “coincidentally” happened after Lawrence Cutajar was ousted from his post as head of Malta’s police.
They also mainly happened, again totally coincidentally, after Peter Grech, the Attorney General resigned.
Another coincidence in this is that the previous Prime Minister, the one known in nefarious circles as ix-xiħ (the old one signifying something closer to the don in mafia slang), is now not even an MP.
Tying up a few other coincidences is the news of news that has hit and engulfed the whole nation.
Of course, the timing of it was just a coincidence. What better way to distract, to obstruct, to dilute the real horrors that are being uncovered than to turn the spotlight on Jason Azzopardi?
Malta, land of farcical tragedies, is enraged and up in arms that Jason Azzopardi has sinned. That he is tainted. That he is guilty as hell.
By putting about the fiasco that Azzopardi was involved in, the evil powers of this country have skewered our focus. The country should be concentrating on the top echelons of the Labour Party who spearheaded the most important financial deals of the government under Joseph Muscat and who are at the time of writing under arrest.
Joseph Muscat is implicated either directly or by being a facilitator of all things nefarious under his watch. If he ever claims ignorance of what was going on while he was heading government, then he would be admitting total negligence, total guilt by incompetence.
The revelation of Jason Azzopardi’s stupid action three years ago was obviously orchestrated to be made public at this crucial time. To deviate the spotlight, to make us forget that those two former right-hand men of Joseph Muscat were part of a conspiracy to rob Malta of all, or many, of its assets. The spotlight should be on the two of them and on Muscat. Where is Muscat? What is he doing? Is anyone asking him a few pertinent questions? Are his past wanderings in all corners of the globe being checked?
All this fades into a blur because in 2017 Jason Azzopardi accepted a few nights’ hotel stay to be paid for by Yorgen Fenech’s uncle.
Of course, Azzopardi is wrong. And truly guilty. He is, and was, a total idiot. He is tainted – not totally pure now – by a whiff of corruption.
In a world where only virgins live, where all are pure, then Jason Azzopardi should be dumped into the dustbin of ignominy. He is undoubtedly guilty and should suffer the consequences.
However, let us not lose sight of the fact that Azzopardi did not partake in corruption to the tune of multi millions. He did not pervert the administration of justice. Yes, he did not come clean. He acted, like all dumb politicians do, irrationally, to accept a joy ride. To top it all from someone he surely should have avoided like the plague.
Azzopardi was not a facilitator of a continuous perversion of justice. He did not seek to cover up for people implicated in the worst crime this country has witnessed.
The scale is totally different.
We – or the majority of the Maltese - seem all out to dump Azzopardi for what he did. What we should be doing is getting hold of our pitchforks and protesting against the horrors this country has gone and is still going through.
The corruption is still costing us millions, if not billions, yet no one says much. There has been a slight attempt at correcting the perversion of justice by the new version of the Labour administration but there is still a mountain range of obstacles before any true justice can be seen in the country.
Jason Azzopardi was fighting this other virus which is crippling our country. The horror he is guilty of is totally eclipsed if one sees the full picture.
Robert Abela and all the cabinet of ministers, as well as the Labour Party, were part of the team that built up and kept Joseph Muscat afloat. The whole Labour Party is to blame for all Muscat’s and his gang’s looting and corruption.
Did Robert Abela have no clue what was going on in his predecessor’s time, with whom he was a consultant? Has he intimated that he would like to check all the dealings and secret manoeuvrings of Joseph Muscat?
Jason Azzopardi is guilty, but his guilt is limited. The guilt of those who are and were in power is much worse.
Let justice be blind. But let it be fair. Let’s metaphorically smack Jason Azzopardi while seeking out the real culprits in this farcical land.
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