Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1319911
8 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 16 DECEMBER 2020 NEWS If not Egrant, then what triggered KEITH Schembri says Joseph Muscat was planning an elec- tion in February 2017, weeks before the Egrant allegations made by Daphne Caruana Gal- izia. But did he deliberately choose not to serve a full term in office to exploit a favourable moment in the polls and en- sure a big win; or was he keen on pre-empting revelations which had yet to come out? In his appearance this week in the public inquiry on the Caruana Galizia assassination, Schembri was asked about a 2017 election data that Caru- ana Galizia has speculated on, pencilled in months before the Egrant affair. Schembri replied: "I never said Daphne Caruana Galizia wasn't right." "You are a politician and you work on numbers. We had a sizeable lead over the Oppo- sition and then Egrant came out and destabilised the coun- try. At the end of the day the people are always sovereign," Schembri replied. 1. His statement tallies with what Daphne Caruana Galizia had claimed in her blog On 17 May 2017 she claimed that at least one month before the Egrant story broke, "which means somewhere around the middle of March", Muscat had planned to call the general elec- tion "for between 27 May and 17 June". She also claimed that the Labour Party already had its campaign slogan by the first week of April revealing that the domain www.laqwazmien. com was registered on 7 April. She asked "What drove Muscat to call a general election after just four years in power?" going on to suggest that "something cracked in February, and in March he decided to call a gen- eral election". 2. It belies Muscat's claim that Egrant triggered the election, or that Yorgen Fenech knew the election date since 2016 Muscat announced the 3 June election during the 1 May meeting on Castille Square, 10 days after Caruana Galizia al- leged that his wife as the owner of Egrant and was on the re- ceiving end of funds from the Azeri ruling family. He pre- sented the election as a way to restore stability and protect jobs threatened by the Egrant allegations. "I will not allow one single place of work to be lost because of the uncertainty that others try to plant," Mus- cat, said, also throwing down the gauntlet for Simon Busut- til, saying he would resign if only a shred of truth emerg- es from what he dubbed "the biggest lie in Maltese political history". Subsequently Joseph Muscat was adamant in refut- ing Yorgen Fenech's claim that he knew an election was due in December 2016: "If Yorgen Fenech knew the election date, then he knew it before me," Muscat quipped when asked about the claim in June 2020. Muscat sticked to the same line in his testimony to the inquiry which actually does not con- tradict Schembri's (and Caru- ana Galizia's) timeline as both suggest that the decision was taken in February and not in December as claimed by Yor- gen Fenech. Yet it is also pos- sible that the idea of an early election had been considered for some time and Fenech may have got inkling thanks to his friendships with Schembri and other people in power. 3. Egrant did not derail Muscat's already established election plans. Instead they seem to have reinforced them Caruana Galizia's Egrant al- legations, later disproven by a magisterial inquiry, did not derail Muscat's election plans. Decisions on election dates are never meant to be cast in stone but may be changed according to political convenience. This means that Muscat could well have decided to stop his elec- tion plans if he thought that Egrant would harm his pros- pects. Instead Muscat skilfully turned Egrant to his advantage, presenting it as an affront to his family's honour and taking full advantage of the absence of any hard evidence or documents to back the claims. In fact Muscat announced the snap election a few days after a weak perfor- mance by Simon Busuttil in a Xarabank debate with Muscat. This raises the question wheth- er the Egrant allegations were indeed a ruse: either by the PN Did Joseph Muscat deliberately choose not to serve a full term in office or was he grabbing a favourable polling moment? And if not Egrant, did 17 Black trigger the 2017 election?