To retain international trust, beyond a robust regulatory framework, you also need to have a credible line-up of trusted personnel to implement it. Here, Malta stood to lose out in the analysis carried out by FATF. As an organization, it gauges whether countries are being effective in how they curb money laundering and abuses in the oversight of financial flows.

On this issue, pseudo-intellectual apologists for the PN joined the fray to argue that the rot started in 2013, soon after the PL got to govern. As I well know “from the inside”,  on this trust indicator, they are plainly wrong.

The assessment outsiders make of Maltese people (without any distinction between Labour and Nationalist) is that we know how to “arrange” matters between us.

Before we rebuild and sustain abroad a credibility in the persons whom we put in charge, we will not get far – and again, it hardly matters whether the PL or the PN is involved.

On the PN side apparently, this point still needs to be understood... or there is little enthusiasm to come to grips with it. What’s important is to put the blame on events post-2013. The approach is not at all smart. To make matters worse from the perspective of those pursuing it, the chances that it will help them win elections are slim.

***

UNRELATED TO 2013!

Back to the previous subject: When coming to review trust in persons (appointed to do a job), those involved in how Europeans and others assess us, will refer to occasions when:

--a Maltese Prime Mnister in office negotiated at night and in a private car, with a criminal regarding the pardon he could organize for him;

--an ex-Prime Minister and an ex-Finance Minister allowed their names to be used as a professional cover for offshore firms which were on the verge of bankruptcy or financed by mafia operators;

--an ex-Finance minister appointed European Commissioner, was fired from his job following allegations of involvement in dubious affairs;

--three ministers spent long years in office without revealing they had funds stashed abroad;

--a Police Commissioner was given a soft exit though he was guilty of a flagrant abuse of power;

--a Chief Justice was found guilty of corruption.

All these people and their stories had no link at all to the post-2013 Labour government.

***

ABORTION: THE STORY CONTINUES

The debate around abortion held in the European Parliament last week hardly opened any new perspectives. It was more like a repetition of arguments that have been made for a long while. It’s difficult to say whether they’re being repeated to reinforce the views of those who are already convinced one way or the other, or whether they’re intended to make new converts.

The matter raises delicate issues and is greatly divisive: you’re either for or against. That is at least what most seem to expect.

Not really though: increasingly I find that many people have begun to consider that a stark choice is not the right way to decide what should be done. On the one hand, they do not want to get caught up in the precepts which Catholic and clerical organizations dish out quite arrogantly. And on the other hand, they want to understand well the consequences for citizens and society of allowing abortion, according to the diverse options available by which to legalize it.