Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1189466
11 Joseph Muscat has betrayed the country. He betrayed the trust of thousands of his own sup- porters, even though a mis- judged sense of loyalty might prevent some from seeing it. He has betrayed the state, government, and Labour. By protecting his own corrupt henchmen in suits, he has sold off our republic. It all makes sense now: all the dodgy flights to Azerbai- jan and the accompanying contracts, the sale of pass- ports, the inexplicable per- mits for 'development' of government property sold off for peanuts, the setting up of secret accounts for the smooth transfer of massive kickbacks, the easy buyout of Labour MPs - and some from the opposing camp - by giving them paid government posi- tions, the assassination of a journalist who joined all the dots and was about to expose everything. I for one was wary of Daphne Caruana Galizia's reporting. Her mix of strongly held, sometimes elitist, opinions and deep-seated antipathy to- wards anything to do with the Labour Party impinged heav- ily on her credibility when exposing the unthinkable. She also blurred the lines of journalism and commercial public relations, such as when she took on the marketing for Anglu Xuereb's Verdala golf course, or when she rub- bished activists and environ- mentalists, as well as journal- ists. I was one of them. She also expected her read- ers to take her at face value, though she might make ex- traordinary claims, leaving everyone guessing whether she would ever back them up with evidence. And her historical whitewashing of successive Nationalist ad- ministrations' corruption and highly questionable sale and privatisation of public assets was hard to defend, even as she started taking the new Nationalist Party leadership head on. So it's deeply tragic that just when she was taking on the biggest ever exposé of not her career, but the entire history of journalism in Malta - the majority of us failed to realise the full implications of what she was onto. It is now pain- fully clear that she was assas- sinated because of her inves- tigations into the murderous black market of politics and big business. Her portrayal in the interna- tional press glosses over all of her less defensible writings, but now that we know what we know about her assassina- tion, that is all irrelevant. Eve- ry grievance, every criticism, every disagreement we may have ever had with Daphne now dissolves into insignifi- cance. What matters now is that Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated by people protected by the prime minis- ter because she was exposing the truth about their meticu- lously planned conspiracy of corruption. Likewise, every self-pro- claimed success that our dis- graced prime minister claims is completely irrelevant to the question at hand. Using these successes to justify the government's excesses is like claiming that the activities of drug cartels in some countries have been largely beneficial, because thousands of fami- lies and entire neighbour- hoods have benefited from the crumbs that fall from the big table. That's why the angry protes- tors on the streets and the in- ternational press are decrying a "Mafia State": an unprec- edented level of corruption enabled by some individuals in the highest positions in the running of our govern- ment and state. For them, the stakes were so high that they brought themselves to blow up Daphne Caruana Galizia, to actively obstruct justice, and to throw every spanner in the works, including spin- ning false stories in the media about the ongoing investiga- tions. Now that we know what we know, it is not just the office of the prime minister that we need to question, but every office of the state, from the police commissioner to the head of public service, who has justified 'positions of trust'. Every government tender, every direct or indirect order, every process involving Mal- tese public funding needs to be brought back to the draw- ing board for investigation. Because Muscat has ruined the reputation of everything he has dealt with, including all of his ministers and MPs who keep supporting him in spite of all the shocking rev- elations that should make any decent citizen sick. Even the Opposition party is part of all this. The inces- tuous relationship with big business was their own inven- tion through decades of neo- liberal economic policies and cronyism that made politics dirty, suspect and corrupti- ble. The PN is not fit for pur- pose at this moment in time. It needs to look in the mirror and go back to basics: being accountable to the public and its constituency, not wallow- ing in the dark, murky shades of party financing that has brought us to where we are now. When Joseph Muscat, through his Faustian strate- gist Keith Schembri, vowed to make Labour pro-business, he essentially put the PN agenda on steroids, resulting in some of the crassest mutations in people of the likes of Sandro Chetcuti. Whenever he decides to re- sign, Joseph Muscat leaves a legacy of colossal moral bank- ruptcy that we won't get out of anytime soon if the two major parties and their sponsors, as well as the corrupted institu- tions of the state – from the police and security services to the attorney general – are not sent to the cleaners. There is not one person or one institution that can do all that – it would only play into our pathetic tribal in- stincts to believe that what we need is one more hero. It requires civil society organi- sations, activists, academics, intellectuals, artists and more journalists to stand up at this moment of truth, but more importantly upright people in government, State positions and the Labour Party to de- nounce our current state and propose ways to clean up the ruins left by Muscat and his henchmen. Whoever doesn't immedi- ately acknowledge this and act on it has no future in the running of our country. maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 4 DECEMBER 2019 Karl Schembri is an author, humanitarian worker and former journalist OPINION Karl Schembri Joseph Muscat and his landslide of moral bankruptcy www.creditinfo.com.mt info@creditinfo.com.mt Tel: 2131 2344 Your Local Partner for Credit Risk Management Solutions Supporting you all the way 'Joseph Muscat has betrayed the country'