It is really worrying that Prime Minister Robert Abela repeats the villainies that brought down his predecessor.
Now that it is documented that Minister Clayton Bartolo stole public money for personal gain and Minister Clint Camilleri helped him, the least that could have happened was for them to resign. When they refused to resign, Prime Minister Robert Abela had to fire them. Instead he kept them there and guaranteed them impunity. Even when Clayton Bartolo admitted that he did wrong because there was no longer any doubt that he did so, everyone kept their place and everyone kept the money they stole as if nothing had ever happened.
In comments to the press to defend the thieving ministers, Prime Minister Robert Abela attacked Repubblika for asking the police to investigate this documented theft. To discredit us and remove our civic right to seek the action of the institutions, he called us a “branch of the PN”, and even though our report was based on the conclusions of the Standards Commissioner, Robert Abela accused us of the crime that we made a “false report”.
Because we accused the ministers of stealing the money, something that Clayton Bartolo admitted is the result of his imperfection, Robert Abela said that we used “a tone of hatred” and that we are looking to “strategically destroy the government ministers in a personal way”.
Separately, the Labor spokesperson Emanuel Cuschieri has again made an appeal in the media for the state to punish our lawyer Jason Azzopardi for representing us in the denunciation we made to the police by removing the security provided by the police due to threats to his person and his life.
We note the following:
- We abhor corruption which among its forms is the theft of public money for private gain. Where we know this happens we denounce it regardless of whether the thief who is caught likes us or not.
- He who does not fight corruption, is also corrupt. Our means are limited but we use them all. We have a right as citizens to ask the police to take action and we exercise that right responsibly. The Prime Minister has a duty to fire the ministers who are caught stealing but he has not fulfilled his duty.
- Civil society has an important function in a democratic society to watch over the people in power, to denounce corruption and to take all the action that the law allows so that whoever is caught in the act pays for their actions. Just because Robert Abela calls us “a branch of the PN” and mobilises his supporters to hate us, we are not going to be silent.
- Everyone, including us of Repubblica, has the right to consult the lawyers of our trust, and the intimidation towards them and the violent threats against them by the spokesmen of the regime are a violation of that right. Still, we are not intimidated. But we hold Prime Minister Robert Abela responsible for the consequences of the intimidation he is mobilizing against us and against those who represent us.