Joseph Muscat and the Vitals Hospitals Magisterial Inquiry
The news that Magistrate Gabriella Vella had concluded the Vitals Hospital Inquiry tore through social media like wildfire. It created a lot of panic. Disgraced ex-Prime Minister Joseph Muscat is panicked, Prime Minister Robert Abela is panicked, and the Labour party is panicked.
It seems pretty certain that the Magistrate recommended that Muscat be arrested and indicted. Independent MEP Arnold Cassola put up the below image on social media, that seems to tally with a report by Mark Camilleri.
I have never seen Joseph Muscat so afraid and confused as when he held the press conference at The Excelsior. He waffled on and on, spouting drivel, clutching at straws. He has already been - for a year or so - trying to block the inquiry on the most ludicrous pretexts, his main argument being that since members of the inquiring magistrate's family have shown their political leanings on social media, she cannot be impartial and just.
Muscat said that he is convinced that he is going to be charged. His spin is that his critics seem to know that he will be charged, hence it must be true. The truth of the matter is that the thing that convinces me most that he will be charged is that he himself knows it.
He painted his family and himself as long-suffering and persecuted, bringing into the equation the Egrant inquiry, his point being that the Egrant inquiry did not show him or his wife to be guilty. The truth of the matter is that it did not find them innocent. The owner of Egrant was not established. Since we don't know whose it is, we don't know whose it isn't. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
He then bought in - for the consumption of Labourites - the famous "Interdett" that the Maltese Catholic Church had imposed on Labour activists in the 1960s. He is being persecuted in the same way that those activists were persecuted, he told us. This comparison, though ludicrous, definitely resonates with the majority of Labourites.
Of course, by saying he is being persecuted, he is in fact saying that the inquiring Magistrate is persecuting him, effectively transforming her into a target and fair game for his minions. The Police Commissioner should certainly be looking at how he is going to ensure her safety and wellbeing. It is no exaggeration to say that her life may well be in danger.
He is being targetted he told us, simply because he is a Labourite, and the institutions (by that he means the judiciary), are targetting Labourites, effectively trying to turn all Labourites against the members of the judiciary, and in the process discrediting the inquiry. This attack on the judiciary contrasts with the what he used to say in the past, that he had faith in the institutions and to "let the institutions do their job".
He also implied that the judiciary is under the control of elements within Nationalist party, to reinforce his attack on the judiciary. According to him, the outcome of the inquiry is a consequence of his electoral victories over the Nationalist Party.
To further his slander against Magistrate Gabriella Vella, he claimed that:
"It so happened that my house was raided just weeks before the general election and now this inquiry was concluded weeks before the EU parliament elections"
Joseph Muscat has realised that the noose is tightening, and knows that the inquiry is a damning indictment of his part in the Vitals hospital fraud. The Vitals deal has already been deemed to be fraudulent by the Courts. Those involved in the fraud can no longer continue to escape justice.