Alfred Sant believed Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi should have resigned. Then he changed his mind.

Former Labour prime minister Alfred Sant told me today he wanted Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi to resign from office. But then he changed his mind.

I was asking him questions at a press conference he was giving with his assistants Miriam Dalli and Marlene Mizzi, the first conference ever in the newly named Salle Daphne Caruana Galizia in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg.

I asked him whether he agreed with the fact Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri stayed in office in spite of being revealed by the Panama leaks to have set up secret bank accounts in Panama. He said his views were “known” because he had made them known in the past. I told him I could not recall what they were and he clarified he had wanted their resignation.

But the June election changed all that. He said the election superseded his views because “the people decided”.

This is where Alfred Sant, Marlene Mizzi and Miriam Dalli break with the entire European Parliament, even their colleagues in the European socialist party.

Because what Alfred Sant professes here is precisely the opposite of what everyone else means by the failure of rule of law.

If Alfred Sant thought Keith Schembri’s and Konrad Mizzi’s actions merited resignation before the election, there is no reason why he should think any differently about the same actions after. If an action is outside the law before the election it does not step inside the law because the majority think it’s fine.

Rule of law is precisely the principle that right or wrong are not decided by plebiscite. The majority view of whether something is outside the law is not relevant. It either is or it is not.