Or ‘Daphne’s crowd’, or ‘Ta’ Simon’, or ‘Ta’ kontra Delia’, or ‘Erba’ anarkiċi’, or ‘Nazzjonalisti indannati’ or ‘Erba’ qtates m’għandhomx x’jagħmlu’. Yep. Doesn’t mean we were wrong though.
I will not dignify the insults Daphne Caruana Galizia got in her life, but for all that she was right.
The Labour Party will not bring itself to realise its error. It will not admit that it had to throw out Konrad Mizzi after four years of defending him when they could have thrown him out in 2016 when we had already found out pretty much all we know now. ‘Where’s the proof?’ they used to say. And now that they’ve been repeatedly slapped in the face with it they pretend to be acting with determination.
But they’re all a bunch of obedient cowards, fearful of the manic idolatry that drives supporters of their party to turn on any internal critic. The members of the Labour Party’s executive walked in to yesterday’s meeting fully expecting to have to defend Konrad Mizzi again. On their way into the meeting, they gave quotes praising him for the service they imagine he gave the country. They did that having known for years that he’s done nothing but rob it.
On their way out they said nothing.
Those members of the Labour Party executive helped Konrad, their star candidate, rob us. They were his armed guards, his explosives experts, his getaway drivers in the biggest heist this country has ever known.
They put him there from whence they have just removed him, never questioning while this barely articulate, lanky clown shot up from nowhere to become the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. They never questioned his ideological vacuity. They never challenged his pathological inability to empathise. They never challenged his facile problem-solving and his superficial appreciation of complex political issues.
And then, when the Panama Papers came out, they never put themselves in his shoes and assessed why they would have gone into so much trouble to set up a company in Panama and a trust in New Zealand merely to register the ownership of a modest red brick house with a garage and €94 in cash.
I am not going to make it easy for all those Labour ministers and parliamentarians and officials and employees and propagandists and accept that they did not understand in February 2016 that Konrad Mizzi was a corrupt bastard who used their party to rob the country of millions. Of course, they understood it.
But he helped them win elections and that was good enough for them. Party first, right or wrong.
They ditched him now because they’re out of excuses. But they helped in the killing of the journalist who outed Konrad Mizzi, and they helped in the covering up of that killing, continuing to hope that their sin could be buried and forgotten.
They also always understood that Keith Schembri – who won them 10 electoral ballots – was in it as well. And they always understood the third leg of this triad was Joseph Muscat, their beloved leader.
Robert Abela should not now be merely withdrawing his charge against Daphne’s husband and children that they hated Malta so much they were prepared to scupper the investigation into her assassination. He should be grovelling on his knees seeking forgiveness before he quits politics for good.
All of them should be on their knees right now. Not to right any wrong they did because it’s too late for that. But merely to set themselves against “the highest standards” that Robert Abela spoke of yesterday.
They should be in front of the Great Siege Memorial this morning lighting candles to pictures of Daphne and leaving there their commitment that the last thing they will do in Maltese politics is to do right by her.
Only then can we believe they have understood what they’ve done.
But they haven’t. Because they continue to hope that their most recent overture to protesters and to the inexorable call for justice would be their last. Joseph Muscat thought he could go on smirking ‘serenely’ after announcing his resignation last December. And right up to yesterday Robert Abela continues to shelter him like he sheltered Konrad Mizzi right up to yesterday, and Chris Cardona up to last week, and Lawrence Cutajar up to the week before that.
For that matter we’re not fooled into thinking that Robert Abela is not protecting Konrad Mizzi still. Chucking him out of the Labour Party group is a symbolic gesture that costs Konrad Mizzi (and Robert Abela, and the Labour Party group) absolutely nothing. They continue to rely on his vote. And Konrad Mizzi continues to rely on his status as a parliamentarian projecting to all his current state of removal as a temporary separation.
This is not justice. Justice would be Konrad Mizzi’s arrest and prosecution. And Chris Cardona’s. And Keith Schembri’s.
And even as they sacrifice minions ever higher up in this Mafia food chain, we won’t be satisfied until we reach the very top. Joseph Muscat needs to have that famous conversation with his daughters again. Because he can hide justice for a while. But he cannot hide forever.
The Labour Party doesn’t want to give up Joseph Muscat. It never reckoned with the violence and the corruption of the 1970s and the 1980s. It never reckoned with the incompetence and collapse of the 1990s. It never reckoned with its primordial hostility to European integration in the 1990s and 2000s.
I does not want to reckon with having elected and supported hysterically a party leader who was the most corrupt politician the country ever produced and in his final year in office was recognised as the most corrupt and the closest to organised crime on the planet.
That’s Joseph tagħna that they worshipped like a golden calf at the foot of the Sinai. They will never recognise their part in the rape and plunder of this country and the killing of its foremost journalist, because the day they will, they’ll go down with their false good.
Still, sad as all that is, it is with pleasure and with more than a little amusement that I welcome Robert Abela and 71 of 73 members of the executive committee of the Labour Party to the ‘Barra Brigade’. We’ve been telling them to do what they did yesterday since 2016.
Get in line, Bob.