Former Prime Minister, Labour Party leader and current PL MEP Alfred Sant said that perpetuating the demonstrations which were seen outside the law courts when Joseph Muscat was charged in relation to the hospitals deal “can do no good.”

Writing in his column in The Malta Independent today, Sant said that one could have foreseen that people “were going to be mobilised in the streets” as the judicial processes associated with the hospitals inquiry kicked off.

Those processes started last Tuesday as Muscat together with his former chief of staff Keith Schembri and former minister Konrad Mizzi amongst others were charged with a range of things, including money laundering, in connection with the now annulled hospitals concession.

Hundreds of his most ardent supporters took up the call of arms issued by PL propagandist Manuel Cuschieri to offer a show of support to the former PM when he was set to be charged.

“If that had something positive going for it, which I disbelieve, now it has been done. Carrying it forward during the coming weeks makes no sense and can do no good,” Sant – who was the PL leader prior to Muscat – wrote.

“The mobilisation that had best be encouraged relates to the quiet and powerful gathering of minds assembled to discover the truth and nothing but the truth, while exposing foul play wherever it is to be found,” he continued.

On the same topic, Sant wrote that the judicial proceedings which began last week “need to be carried forward to their end in a tranquil manner and fast.”

However, he said that “the need will be for speed that in no way disrupts the search for justice.”

“Too many times in the distant and recent past, there have been cases in which the courts served as wells of forgetfulness in which got buried both the fulfillment of justice and the reputations of accused people whose innocence then kept hanging by the thread of the formal claim of their say-so. If a judicial process leads to limbo, then it is not fit for purpose,” he wrote.

Read Alfred Sant’s column here