No, Daphne, I do not approve of bad behaviour, but I will not judge anyone before I’ve heard all of the facts.

Of course I have no doubt that Dalli should have been more cautious, but I still wait to see what are the interests of those who are accusing him.

[Daphne – Cautious about not getting caught, or cautious in choosing his friends, associates and meetings?]

After all they might have done even worse than what they are accusing him with.

Time will tell, this is just the beginning of the whole story.

There was no need for indecent haste, peremtory judgment and a summary “execution” when OLAF itself admits that the evidence was only circumstantial, therefore ipso fact ambiguous and it did not prove anything against Malta’s commissioner.

I say he gets the sixty million by creating the impression that the whole process, both before and after his removal, is vitiated.

Ok, so he may not be Clooney, but why put up this soap opera if not to gain time until the directive fails the relevant deadlines?

I did not say that Dalli was clamouring for transparency – Dalli “pro domo sua” would not carry much weight with me. But you should be able to understand that it is the independent European Parliamentarians of the budgetary committe that are demanding more transparency and disclosure.. And if you remove your anti-Dalli blinkers you would have to admit theirs would be unbiased very important and very relevant. To your way of “reasoning” those parliamentarians would also making “the same mistake Dalli is making”. Only OLAF is the infallible one.

What happened to Edith Cresson can happen again to present members of the European Commission and therefore the autocratic Barroso-Kessler CAN be actually outflanked as happened in 1999. As of now Barroso-Kessler are not “refusing to resign but they are resisting the demand of EU parliamentarians to be transparent.

Having passed through such a turmoil, the EU Commission under President Barroso had no other other choice but to take swift and direct action.

Dalli isn’t clamouring for more transparency. He’s clamouring for an opportunity to bang his own drum louder and longer.

This is the man who forgot about a couple of meetings he’d had, with the Tobacco industry lobby, in his role as Commissioner.

You’re making the same mistake Dalli is making. Pinning blame on institutions and industry doesn’t automatically clear his name.

Are we supposed to kow-tow to the maxim “Might is right”?

Dalli is not alone. European Parliamentarians in the budgetary committee openly support the demand for more transparency and so does the prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

Mass resignation of an entire European Commission guilty of corruption is a recent event (1999)

It happened already in March 1999 when the entire Jaques Santer European Commission resigned because of the ovewrpowering stench of corruption.

[Daphne – You’re wrong. They resigned together because Edith Cresson, who was under pressure to resign, refused to do so. Of course, she should have been fired, but to avoid that, they all resigned en masse.]

All the crap that he pronounced subsequent to that act is utterly irrelevant to the point at issue.

It was nothing more than a pathetic attempt to whitewash his political armageddon.