Minister Carmelo Abela is in the eye of a proverbial political storm.

He was recently found to have breached ethics with the publication of an advert intended to boost his image rather than provide information of public value. Public funds were used to pay for the costs of this self-promotion. The Commissioner for Public Standards found Abela in the wrong on this matter.

But Abela was spared further humiliation when the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anglu Farrugia, abstained from casting a deciding vote following a debate in the House’s Standards of Public Life Committee. The committee, made up of two Labour MPs and two PN MPs, was divided on what decision should be taken. Farrugia’s abstention meant that the report could not be adopted, meaning that the minister could not be punished and neither could he be forced to pay back the money that was spent on the advert. The Speaker’s position, as explained in our editorial on 30 April, rendered the committee toothless.

Abela is now facing more flak as the Nationalist Party is calling for his resignation or removal after reports alleging his involvement in a heist on a bank in 2010, at a time when he was an HSBC employee. Abela is vehemently denying the accusations levelled against him, describing them as “false” and “a calumny”. He has also filed a libel suit against PN MP Jason Azzopardi, who mentioned his name in connection with the incident in a Facebook post. Court proceedings started on Monday, with Abela’s lawyer Pawlu Lia declaring that there will be no mediation for an out-of-court settlement to be reached. Both sides want to go the whole way.

Without going into the merits of the case, what is curious is the way Prime Minister Robert Abela has been silent on the whole situation.

Robert Abela took action to have then Gozo Minister Justyne Caruana removed from her position after her husband’s ties with Yorgen Fenech, the man accused of masterminding the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, were exposed. He took action to have Konrad Mizzi kicked out of the Labour Party, saying on the day the decision was taken that his party’s and government’s standards are of the highest level. He also forced the resignation of Rosianne Cutajar pending the outcome of an investigation into her alleged links with Fenech.

Robert Abela has shown some mettle in all the above three situations. But he has remained strangely aloof, at least in public, on Carmelo Abela who, incidentally, is a minister within the Prime Minister’s own office.

That Robert Abela has so far chosen to keep Carmelo Abela in his place could only be interpreted as meaning that he believes his minister. It is probable that the two had a private conversation during which Carmelo Abela convinced his superior that he (Carmelo) is extraneous to the allegations being made against him. This has led Robert Abela to not take any action to relieve the pressure that his government is facing, in the same way that he did with Caruana, Mizzi and Cutajar.

Time will probably – and hopefully – tell whether Robert Abela’s position is the correct way of dealing with the situation.