Sixteen-year-old mayors, cannabis associations, minimum wage increase and changes to the condominium act are just a few of the distractions the government has thrown at us in the past days in an attempt to steer public discussion away from the scandals that are hitting the country, one by one.

Tomorrow we will have the biggest diversion of them all, the budget for 2024, an exercise in which the government will hand out a few more goodies to try to win back some support which, as one survey after another is showing, it has lost since last year’s election. But no amount of sugar-coating will take away the bad taste that the people have been left with in the past weeks. Then again, €12.81 per week extra will not buy you a boat, whether you’re a socialist or not.

The dust raised by the disability funds fraud and the driving licences racket is far from having settled, but this week we had another shock to the system.

Last Monday, the Court of Appeal dismissed Steward Health Care’s plea against a decision to annul the hospitals’ privatisation deal. It confirmed the original landmark judgment handed down in February which cancelled the contracts the government had entered into to pass on three public hospitals to be run first by Vitals, and later by Steward, which had taken over the concession.

The February judgment had described the deal as being “fraudulent”. The Court of Appeal has now noted that there was “collusion” too, involving the government of the time, then led by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat with Konrad Mizzi as Health Minister. It is not known, the judgment says, why those whose duty it was to protect the national interest failed. It also observed that the government continued to pump millions of euros to the three hospitals – St Luke’s, Karen Grech and Gozo General – even though contractual obligations were not being fulfilled.

Following Monday’s ruling, a heated debate in Parliament ensued with the Opposition demanding action to recover the €400 million which were passed on to the companies that ran the hospitals, with the government replying that it has already moved to recoup any money which was handed over but which had not been utilised for the purposes of the agreement reached.

The next day, Nationalist Party leader Bernard Grech and MP Adrian Delia, who when he was Opposition Leader had filed the original court case to take back the hospitals, went to the police commissioner to urge a comprehensive investigation. They were informed that the police have no inclination to investigate the matter and are waiting for the conclusion of a magisterial inquiry. It’s another confirmation that the police find it easy to target the small fry, but are unwilling to take steps against the big guns.

In a normal democratic country, there would have been arrests after a judgment such as the one delivered on Monday. But, once again, nothing of the sort happened. Prime Minister Robert Abela continues to say that the institutions are working. In whose favour, we ask?

The people who were involved in the deal, on the government’s behalf, no longer hold office. They cannot be asked to resign although, as we all know, both Muscat and Mizzi left politics under a huge cloud.

But political responsibility should not stop with them. It must be pointed out that, even after their departure, the government led by Robert Abela continued to sustain the deal that had been entered into in 2015. Millions of euros continued to be given out from public money for the hospitals to continue to be run, and each time the Labour government was accused of wasting taxpayer money, Abela continued to defend the deal. Just to give one example, in the budget presented in October of last year, Steward had been allocated nearly €80 million for 2023.

It was ironic to read, in the statement soon after Monday’s judgment, that the government “will continue to safeguard the national interest from all aspects, including financial ones”. The government first squandered so much taxpayer money, and then it has the temerity to say that it will “continue” to safeguard the country’s financial interests.

The government said nothing about Muscat and Mizzi; neither did it have any comment to make about the damning court ruling, which found it (the government) wanting in the way it continued to shield the deal, taking Steward’s side right until the first judgment was delivered, rather than do its duty to protect public interest.