Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/820803
14 As we all know, coalition negotiations between Alter- nattiva Demokratika and the Nationalist Party have broken down. It was reported that the main bone of contention concerned the name of the new party; which admittedly does seem a petty detail, amid such weighty aff airs of state. Prof. Cassola: can you give us a clarifi cation of what ac- tually happened, from your perspective? Was it really just about a name? e issue of the name, in real- ity, was just the tip of the ice- berg. is was not about the name, it was all about strategy. Let's not beat about the bush: the reality, at least as of last Sat- urday, is that your latest polls show that all the votes of PN, Marlene [Farrugia], us [AD] and the switchers – counted all together – remain fewer than Joseph Muscat's tally. is means that, for a coalition to win against criminal politicians like Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, and Brian Tonna, etc... it needs to convince tra- ditional Labour voters, who are literally sickened by the way Muscat's government is operat- ing, to vote for the coalition. Our assessment is that, if you have a list under the heading 'Partit Nazzjonalista', unfortu- nately – because of how this country is, and has always been: with people who say 'I have blue blood'; 'I was Nationalist/ Labour from when I was in my mother's womb', etc. – those voters will never feel comforta- ble voting for anything that has the PN emblem on it. Hence the name: what we were say- ing was, come up with another name, so that those voters can vote for the coalition. We sug- gested 'Qawsalla' [Rainbow], but it could have been anything else: Alliance for Malta, Coali- tion for Malta, whatever. It could even have been, though I don't like the idea myself, 'Forza Nazjonali'. But the PN was absolutely infl exible on this. We told them: to convince those voters, we need an inclu- sive, not exclusive, party list; one that refl ects the diversity and plurality of the component parties. And like it or not, we have 2,000 core voters who vote AD 1 and 2, and stop there. 50% of AD's voters do not con- tinue their vote across party lines, because they can't bear voting for the bigger parties. So if we came out on the PN ticket and under the name 'PN', the coalition would immediately have lost those 2,000 votes. We would also lose the potential of thousands of honest Labour- ites, who love Malta, but who see the obscenities [hnizri- jiet] of this government from Panama onwards, and want to protest against the way Joseph Muscat has governed. But if the choice is PN, with the PN emblem, they will never vote for the coalition. ere are a lot of angry Nationalists out there; I have received many insults and threats in the past four days, from hundreds of people. I can understand the di- lemma. It's everybody's dilem- ma. It's a question of strategy. To win, you have to convince both those Labourites and the AD voters. We believe that the name was an obstacle. But [now that things have worked out this way], and AD is contesting on its own, we see our role as to win the votes of all those who cannot bear the governance of Joseph Muscat, but who don't feel comfortable voting for the PN party list. e AD list is the natural, normal and ordinary list for these people... At the same time, we are talk- ing about a coalition that has come together specifi cally for one purpose: to remove Joseph Muscat from offi ce. Is that enough to form the basis of a coalition that intends to govern, if elected...? No... ... then the next question has to be, what common ground could there be between AD and the PN to form a govern- ment? ere are huge, his- torical and very conspicuous policy diff erences between the two parties. I think that the coalition issue, at least for this election, seems to be closed. We left the door open; it is still open from our end. What I can tell you is that we went [to those meetings] so well-prepared, that we didn't just have a statute to register the new party... it [the statute] would have been only for the purpose of the election; it was even written in the statute that, the day after the election, the party would dissolve and each component party continue on its own. We weren't suggesting – as some tried to spin it – that the Nationalist Party had to change its name. Not at all. Nor Marlene, either. Nobody, not even us. All parties would have remained as they are; but, for the purpose of the election, and because of the electoral law, we would have established a new party for two months, to contest this election. Once the election is over, after some time, a dissolution clause comes into eff ect, which means that all parties go back to how they were before. But we didn't go just with this statute; we also went with a 25-point manifesto of principles. All things consid- ered, the PN told us: 'we don't seem to have any major diff er- ences between us; we agree on the basic principles'... On those 25 points, you mean? Yes. But other more generic dif- ferences between the parties do exist... on party fi nancing, the environment, all sorts of other issues. Naturally, there will be diff er- ences. I can name some from now: for instance, the PN is all-out in favour of a tunnel between Malta and Gozo. We will oppose that; without a doubt. e PN is in favour of spring hunting. We will oppose that, too. But in spite of these diff erences – which are great, even though we will be mak- ing our parliamentary position clear from the outset – there is, unfortunately, the current major problem of governance: the problem Joseph Muscat got us all into. I would never have imagined that, 30 years after we almost ended up in a civil war – circa 1987 – he would have got us back into a state where we are discussing problems of governance [on this level]. Some might say it is all ru- mour... but I think that, once there is a data cloud contain- ing scanned documents, those documents will come out dur- ing the campaign. e 'cloud' will burst, and start raining a few documents. But, so far, we haven't seen them yet... I'm referring mainly to the Egrant issue here... so, on that aspect alone, I cannot really comment at this stage. But on the other things which have evidently emerged: kickbacks from the sale of passports, the Panama revelations, etc... these are grave issues of bad governance that are eroding the moral and ethical fi bre of the country. Un- fortunately, those issues have to come fi rst and foremost... Yet it seems we are moving away from the Egrant issue, onto more 'familiar' corrup- tion territory: kickbacks, etc. e direct link with Joseph Muscat appears to be reced- ing, and even the amounts of money involved are lower. Is there a chance that the criminality being discussed has also been exaggerated for political reasons? In my opinion, no. We've al- ways had corruption cases in the past; but now it's on an in- ternational scale... at's true of the Panama Pa- pers, but the latest allegations concern kickbacks paid local- ly to Keith Schembri through the IIP scheme. ere is an international angle, but it's not the same as Azerbai- jani money being laundered through an account belong- ing to the PM's wife... With all due respect, if you've deliberately opened companies in Panama, in the British Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, etc, you would have done it for a reason. Nobody is as naive as that. And Muscat's great mistake – this is why he now has an albatross hanging around his neck – [was that he didn't] sack them im- mediately. Even if there was no money [in the companies], the fact that one even thought of doing that, in itself displays a complete lack of ethics, and as such is not acceptable in poli- tics under any circumstances. But instead [of sacking them], he got himself entangled with them for 13 months; and the suspicion now is that these three political gangsters – Schembri, Tonna and Mizzi – are leading the prime minister by the nose. If the Egrant allegations are verifi ed... ... en we'll be at a whole other dimension... ... well, it would signify that Muscat is himself part of the gang. Yet such a serious al- legation remains unproven (at least for now). Aren't there too many uncertainties and question marks around this case? at is why I am not talking about Egrant at this stage. I am only talking about the other cases; and those are certainties. Plus, there is another problem concerning the Malta Finan- cial Services Authority. How can the MFSA give a permit to someone with no experi- ence to open a bank, in just three months, when there is supposed to be a due diligence process? en there's some- thing that the European Greens noticed; I wasn't even aware of it. e chairman of the MFSA is Prof. Joe Bannister. e Eu- ropean Greens drew my atten- tion to the fact that Bannister is also, at the same time, the vice- chairman of Finance Malta. Do you realise the signifi cance? Finance Malta goes abroad to advertise the incentives to [set up companies] in Malta. So the man who advertises Malta abroad, when back in Malta, is the one who performs due diligence on the same compa- nies. When you see all these elaborate connections [bizzilla], they are truly suspicious. And the bad name they have gener- ated for Malta overseas, and the doubts that have been shed on Malta's fi nancial services sector, is a tremendous shame for our country. Meanwhile, AD is now back at the same position, more or less, it has always been in elections. e electoral reform that was supposed to happen, never happened... at was another of Muscat's broken promises: to have a 'Constitutional convention'... the usual empty rhetoric. He took us for a ride on this too. He did nothing... Interview By Raphael Vassallo maltatoday, SUNDAY, 7 MAY 2017 Muscat's great mistake – this is why he now has an albatross hanging around his neck – was that he didn't sack them immediately PANAMAGATE Between the hammer