I don’t know what to think, and I don’t know what to say. To tell you the truth I’m quite sure I’m in a position to think or say anything. I almost kicked the box to ensure I was not seeing things or suffering from double vision last Thursday when the Prime Minister announced John Dalli had been, after all, ‘exonerated’ from everything he had been accused of.
That the PM has decided to expose himself in such a way proves one of three things:
(1) That he is very naïve; (2) He had a very bad guilt trip; or (3) Entering a national election with the John Dalli chapter not yet closed would be tantamount to flying a plane with a time bomb on board.
In the end I have to say it was a little bit of everything.
The PM must have been informed that this decision would lead to flak from all those in his party who are not quite interested in rehabilitating people or seeking the truth, but in winning elections.
It is clear, is it not, that only three months after becoming Prime Minister, the decision to push leadership contender John Dalli into resigning was not exactly the best option one could be encouraged to do. Those who reported the news in those weeks will remember the friction between the two factions being not only visible and perceptible, but a good reason for the abysmal showing for the PN in the European Parliament elections – as Godfrey Grima’s internal report attests.
To make matters worse, the knives were out when certain journalists went out of their way to offload all their firepower not on their sworn enemy Alfred Sant, but a PN heavyweight.
The Iranian shipping connection and the purchase of airline tickets from a certain company were bound to attract attention – anyone should have advised Dalli at the time that sooner or later the vultures would spring into action.
And they did. With all the accusations bandied around in all the press, including PBS, enter former Where’s Everybody employee Joe Zahra, a freemason and one of the workhorses on Bondiplus, which enjoyed featuring the whole Dalli saga just days before his ‘untimely’ resignation.
(And by the way: will we be seeing a sequel to this whole episode next Monday on PBS?)
During this same period, the private investigator Joe Zahra, now appealing a two-year conviction, literally concocted a story from his imagination and fancy for subterfuge by implicating Dalli and his family in a series of kickbacks from the Italian firm Inso which had been awarded a medical contract.
The PM’s office said that the report had not been believed at any point and that the PM did not in any way consider this in his commiserations when deciding about Dalli.
But it is hard to believe that it did not have any bearing on his judgement. The fact that Zahra’s report, commissioned by Simed, had been presented to the PM on the 11 June, and that Dalli gave Gonzi his resignation letter at the end of June, raises more questions than answers.
To be fair, the OPM argues that the PM sent the SIMED reps, Joseph Fenech, Frank Farrugia and Raphael Fenech Adami, packing. When they returned after Dalli’s resignation, the PM asked the Commissioner of Police to investigate.
Weeks later, John Rizzo had already informed the PM that Zahra’s report was a figment of the former Lorry Sant bodyguard’s imagination.
The fact that the report had been presented by Simed also speaks volumes about how serious some foreign companies can get. But this is rather superfluous. In three and a half years, Dalli was shelved, ignored and forgotten – and this was a finance minister who spent ten years at the Exchequer, the boy next door.
I have met many ministers who argued that after 3 July, 2004, Dalli was history. They emphasised ‘history’ – but history’s like oil over water; it has a strange way of resurfacing.
Because if Gonzi had any reason to accept Dalli’s resignation, he could have taken a leaf out of Tony Blair’s book, and bring back Dalli back sooner rather than later, if anybody had any sense.
But it was clear that there was a reluctance to do so. And many of the fingers point to Pietà.
In the end the bone of contention was the Auditor General’s report. It took three years for anyone to realise – and only after a news report in MaltaToday this year – that the auditor’s report had not been finalised and the auditor had in fact compiled a report that was wide-ranging, covering general ministerial procedure in ordering flight tickets, and not conducting an investigation into John Dalli’s procurement of air tickets.
It got even more complicated when the audit office’s legal counsel Profs. Ian Refalo advised the Auditor General Joseph G. Galea that he could not sign the report.
He could, I would have imagined, presented the report and made a note about his problem with his signature. Galea’s signature is not exactly the seal on Chamberlain’s peace accord. But like all good lawyers, Profs. Refalo is very good at making a perfectly simple matter look very complicated.
There is no doubt in my mind that the auditor is not an independent official constitutionally appointed by the two political parties; but it does not mean Galea needs 1,207 days to finalise a report… and then somehow realise that he cannot sign it. If this is crass incompetence then what is? Frankly, something does not quite sound right.
To be forgotten for three years is no joke. In Dalli’s position, many would have read the writing on the wall and taken the easy way out. Leave politics. Which is after all, not such a bad idea.
In the end, he decided to hang on, against all the advice he was given. Resilience is not the word. Stubbornness is more like it.
But then perhaps someone should have told the PM about Dalli’s fighting spirit. In the end, something must have convinced party HQ that the Dalli factor could have surfaced at any moment and at the wrong moment.
But Gonzi’s aides have a different story: they argue that it was the PM’s insufferable introspection that led him to take a stand that was arguably a very unpopular one. Appointing him as consultant on economy and finances was to be very frank, too little, too late. In politics showing weakness or admitting to a mistake is not taken as a plus.
And yet Gonzi did what many believed he would never do.
It must have been harder for Gonzi to face the press on Thursday. Hard because of all the things that have been published, insinuated and alleged. For Gonzi to retreat and make such a declaration must have required litres of Bovril.
More importantly it leaves him open to a plethora of criticism from his inner sanctorum and effectively waves the green light for Dalli to open his campaign without having to look behind his back. He stands in two crucial constituencies, Sliema and Qormi.
The return of Dalli has not been welcomed by many backbenchers, who had moved in to take over the pickings from the former heavyweight. They may have found the recent events too hard to digest.
But politics is a weird science, and it evolves in strange and unusual ways. One day in politics is a like one year at sea. And with the real election campaign probably kicking off in January next year, most people would have forgotten what happened on Thursday 29 November, 2007 at the Auberge de Castille.
The only persons who will remember that date will be Dalli himself, and the innumerable individuals who prayed to see the man evaporate into space.
The vast electorate on the other hand, will be concerned about the bread and butter issues.

The one issue which has obviously been overshadowed is the Xarabank-Sant debacle. Sant has said that he will not attend Xarabank because of its bias. He even cites the brass bands that are intelligently used to cut short his brainwaves.
I am sure Azzopardi prefers Gonzi to Sant, but he does not quite undermine Sant by using a brass band.
Sant has said he wants a Broadcasting Authority kind of debate with faceless moderators who act as timekeepers. He is of course impressed by the Sarkozy/Royal debate. But then everyone should know that journalists in France are renowned for being tame, lame and lackeys.
I am not one to praise Xarabank and its sister programme and there is no doubt in my mind that there is an angle and motive to every question Joe Azzopardi asks. I am not one to stand up for Lou Bondì and his programme either. Everyone knows what I think.
But if I am to choose between a timekeeper and journalists with a bias, then I will reluctantly go for the latter. Santoro or Luttazzi are all so-called journalists with a very clear agenda. When Berlusconi called for their removal he was doing the thing politicians should never do, talk about when and how the goalposts should be moved around or removed to allay their fears of being poked or prompted into saying things they prefer not to say.
Anyhow, I look forward to the next debate hosted by none other than an MFA referee with a bright red whistle, a red card and a yellow card for any disobedient guest. Preferably the referee should be an independent minded person without a brain.