In the early 1990s, Italy was at the end of its tether. In his attempt to install his socialist party as the arbiter of political life, Bettino Craxi had started from 1980 onward a way of doing politics that exacerbated Italy’s endemic corruption problem. The Italian Magistrates put an end to all that in 1992, when they spearheaded the revolution known as Tangentopoli (literally, Kickback City).
Under Joseph Muscat’s government, Malta became Belt it-Tixħim, like Tangentopoli Italy. As soon as Daphne Caruana Galizia published the Panama hat picture on her blog linking it to Konrad Mizzi, it became clear that at least two top people in the Labour Administration had created offshore structures that all clear-headed people concluded were conceived to receive ill-gotten funds.
But the country was still madly in love with Joseph Muscat and it couldn’t remove its rose-tinted glasses to see reality in its true colours. Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, two of Muscat’s closest aides, were hailed as demigods who turned everything they touched to gold.
Few had the guts to bear the standard of uprightness. Among those few stood Simon Busuttil, a man who looked too polite, too well-mannered, almost too self-restrained to be a fighter.
But, like some others who put Country before Party, Simon Busuttil clearly heard the country’s call to fight. As a true patriot, he rose to the challenge. And fought.
He took a lot of blows. Time was against him. Time was against all of us who took part in that battle.
And because people need time to digest what’s really going on politics, the crooks managed to delay the ignition of the machine of justice.
But Simon Busuttil had seen right. And he had had the stubbornness to fight. Even though – and let’s be frank about this – many complained that he’s too nice, too well-bred, too upright for the cut-throat arena of politicking.
Truth is Simon Busuttil had the guts and acuity to stand tall and fight like there’s no tomorrow.
Last Saturday was Simon Busuttil’s birthday, and Destiny gave him an unbelievable present. The man he had accused of bribery, who seemed untouchable and clad in a political shroud of impunity, was arraigned and charged with serious crimes, so serious he wasn’t even granted bail.
Needless to say, Keith Schembri’s still legally innocent. But politically we all know he’s not.
When Keith Schembri resigned from Chief of Staff to Muscat way back in November 2019, a Cabinet member was quoted by a newspaper saying there was a lot of resentment for how Keith Schembri had pressured Ministers on a number of issues, though the newspaper didn’t specify which. But we’re not fools; we can figure things out. Keith Schembri thought of politics as another business venture.
The Panama law firm that opened Keith Schembri’s offshore structure is one of many. How can we be sure that Keith Schembri hasn’t opened other companies in Panama itself or in other jurisdictions where he could receive ill-gotten money? This is something that we will probably never discover.
What we have discovered, however, is that there are still true patriots. One of them is Simon Busuttil, who fought when all the odds were against him, when he was politically weak, when his chances of a quick victory were practically non-existent. He fought nonetheless. With the courage of the soft-spoken, the determination of the gentle, and the inspiration of the patriot.
This country will reap the harvest of Simon Busuttil’s work over time. He’s reminded one and all that crime doesn’t pay.
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I’ve written this short piece in a sort of poetic vein. This is because I see poetic justice in what has happened over the past couple of days. Not just on the level of events, but also on the level of language. Simon Busuttil characterised this battle against political evil with the persistent cry of “Barra! Barra!” – “Get out [of the seat of power]!” – and for a long time he got no reply. Now, his cry has returned as the echo of History. “Ġewwa! Ġewwa!” it’s telling the Castille Gang, in its strange spatio-temporal softness and vastness: “Go to jail!”