The Sunday Times story implies Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri are under a criminal investigation. Where are their resignations?

There’s a lot of thinking and asking that comes out of the stories on this morning’s front page of The Sunday Times. Somehow Labour spinners are presenting this is some form of vindication.

There is one simple stark fact that emerges from the information given to The Sunday Times and we’re going to assume everyone is acting in good faith here.

Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri are currently under criminal investigation.

A government minister and the prime minister’s chief of staff are being investigated by the police for a criminal offence.

By any standard, even the lowest, the two must resign immediately now the police have confirmed this.

They cannot stay anywhere near a position where they can influence the outcome of those investigations by virtue of the power lent to them to govern the country. And they cannot drag down the entire government with them.

With both points, I am being moderately facetious of course. The government has no reputation to lose. And if anything this criminal investigation is overdue by two years so they have had plenty of time to manipulate the outcome while staying in office.

But reading The Sunday Times Joseph Muscat has no option but to phone Lawrence Cutajar this morning, ask him to confirm if the police have opened a criminal inquiry into his two closest aides, and proceed to fire them.

The polite form would be that they have resigned to clear their names without harming their government by becoming the story.

Except they have been the story for over two years.

The Prime Minister will likely not do this. We have long concluded that that is because he’s in on whatever they are up to. If he had to fire Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri this morning, he’d have to resign by this afternoon.

No plans to do that.

Incidentally one of many questions that emerge from The Sunday Times’s story on 17 Black this morning: who is conducting the magisterial inquiry into 17 Black?

We did not know this inquiry existed. Jason Azzopardi on Facebook is still saying there isn’t one.

But let’s assume again all characters in the publication of The Sunday Times’s story are acting in good faith: the claim is there is a magisterial inquiry that the police requested when they started their criminal investigation into 17 Black.

Even when we have a bad traffic accident we get told who the Magistrate conducting the inquiry is and what experts she or he appointed. So who is it? And who are the experts appointed by her or him?