I have a few draft commentaries piled up, so please bear with me while I dust off this keyboard. I’ve been in front of a camera far more than I’ve been at my desk writing as of late.
Throughout this week, I’ve had the unenviable opportunity to really ruminate on the outcome of the Clayton Bartolo saga. As most of you should know by now, Bartolo joined the country’s hall of shame as yet another disgraced minister who hails from the Labour Party’s ranks. You can watch our summary of this week’s events by clicking here.
It is widely understood that prime minister Robert Abela forced Bartolo’s resignation in yet another disastrous U-turn for his administration.
We are all nauseously familiar with the script by now. Someone screws up and gets caught being hopelessly corrupt, the prime minister and his entire government come down like a bag of hammers on every critic who dares to complain about it, and then they backtrack when the public gives them the middle finger.
It is equally apparent that Clayton Bartolo didn’t resign because of what he did. Clayton Bartolo resigned because he became a source of embarrassment for a prime minister that can’t tell right from wrong. A prime minister in charge of a government that yells pajjiż ta’ kwalita’ at anyone who will listen but won’t budge an inch to adequately punish two ministers who were caught flagrantly abusing their power to accommodate a minister’s partner-turned-wife. The only clearly defined quality in that equation is the amoral familism which underpins it.
This whole scandal was supposed to come to a head yesterday. On paper, a parliamentary committee is set up to do just that. The problem is that the politicians who created those committees in the nineties made a horrible assumption: that all the MPs who would be appointed to these committees would not delay or obstruct proceedings.
So, instead of a reasonable discussion in which our elected representatives sat down to seriously discuss sanctions which Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri should face, we got a pointless, watered down resolution to “admonish” them. Bartolo’s wife, Amanda Muscat, paid back just €16,000 of the tens of thousands of euros she made, courtesy of the taxpayers.
The insolent way in which the money was paid back via a letter and an attached cheque makes it quite clear that they are well off enough to dispense a year’s salary without really sweating it. Soċjalisti ħafja, insomma. Got bless.
This week, I spent half a morning in Parliament so I could watch government henchmen covering up for their colleagues and obstructing the process in such a manner as to ensure they got away with a slap on the wrist and what amounts to a pitiful fine.
After all, the happy couple seem to be doing perfectly fine as is. A newly purchased cafe in Naxxar, a lavish wedding, a €40,000 car with a personalised number plate, and a cheque for €16,000 going out of its booklet faster than you can say “AMA X CLA”? Business seems to be booming over at Clayton Bartolo HQ.
It seems like a significant upward leap considering that in 2022, the disgraced former tourism minister had declared just €65,222 in income (his wage as minister) and one apartment and garage in Mellieħa as his only asset.
A photo of the Alfa Romeo Tonale which the couple own, parked right in front of the cafe which Amanda Muscat runs.
This is what the Labour Party normalised in its decade of rot. Joseph Muscat institutionalised it, and Robert Abela expanded it. The great legacy of two leaders who ushered in more criminality than you can shake a stick at. Ministers’ portfolios grow fatter by the minute, and I’m not just talking about Ian Borg’s burgeoning foreign affairs ministry or Owen Bonnici’s foray into the film industry.
Arguments about whether they are even able to correctly describe what’s wrong with everything they do feel almost superfluous. Almost, but not quite – the fact is that it is important to understand whether the individuals who are in charge of our country’s government actually have the ability to tell right from wrong.
A whole chunk of the standards committee meeting in which our representatives begrudgingly “agreed” to those pathetic sanctions was taken up by exactly that – did they even bother to show any kind of remorse for what they did? Did they express any genuine sense of accountability? As if. Not on Robert Abela’s watch.
It’s easy to get lost in the fury of ‘how dare they even show their faces in public after doing something like that?’ without examining it any further. It’s more difficult to examine the remorselessness, digest the implications, and get a steady move on towards booting all of them out of office.
Any shred of a better future for everyone depends on that.