It’s good to remember how it started

As Magistrate Gabriella Vella concluded and submitted her inquiry into Joseph Muscat’s public hospitals fraud, it is appropriate to remember how this inquiry started because the very fact that it was made is anomaly in itself. This is the first extensive investigation into the corrupt activities of Joseph Muscat’s government by a state authority. It wasn’t the Police who started this investigation and it is indeed an anomaly that one of the most high-profile investigations that took place  in our history was not led by the Police and was not even prompted by them.

This investigation was prompted and demanded by the NGO Repubblika after a lengthy struggle in the courts with the government. Most of the work to conduct this legal battle was made by Robert Aquilina, the previous head of the NGO, and Jason Azzopardi who is a previous government minister and currently an activist and a lawyer to the family of Daphne Caruanas Galizia in her murder case. Meanwhile, Robert Aquilina has been the target of constant threats, public incidents of harassment and constant attacks by the Labour Party, while Jason Azzopardi had to endure a defamation campaign of lies against him by Saviour Balzan and up to 439 articles against him by the demented and sick blogger Simon Mercieca. Yorgen Fenech also conspired against him.

Police Commissioner Angelo Gafa has a lot to explain about how we have come to this situation. He himself could have started many other important investigations on the various corrupt schemes of the Joseph Muscat’s cabal, instead he sabotaged the case of Pilatus Bank. He chose to take the back-seat when supposedly he was leading the battle in the frontline. It’s only now that he may begin to realise how humiliated he looks that justice is being served in this country irrespective of him, rather than because of him.