GUEST POST/Muscat chose someone who manifestly did not have the qualifications or experience for the job

Sent in by Dire Straits:

Before hearings of this sort there are always people doing the rounds and lobbying both ways. That is what lobbying means. Yet in the great majority of cases – far too often really – the candidates are approved.

The fact that Toni Abela was rejected is entirely the Prime Minister’s fault.

1. Muscat chose someone who manifestly did not have the qualifications or experience for the job. It is not easy to find in Malta people who have experience in auditing on a scale that actually means something in Europe. The previous government compensated for this by nominating people with extensive experience in government. Toni Abela could boast of having been ‘vice’ mayor of Hamrun.

2. The Court of Auditors has to be the most strait-laced institution in Europe, and in these post-Edith Cresson days, that means being incredibly uptight about everything being correct and above-board. What’s more, everything needs to be seen to be so. If you nominate someone with Toni Abela’s cocaine baggage you are just begging for trouble. (This might not have been clear to everyone, but it certainly should have been to ex-MEP Joseph Muscat).

3. Even so, there was at least a chance he might have sneaked through if the whole nomination hadn’t been tainted with the whiff – stench – of corruption. You have an under-qualified, under-experienced candidate with a dodgy drug-related skeleton in his closet – if the PM vouching for him had enjoyed great respect you might have still somehow pulled it off. Instead the Prime Minister in question is embroiled in an incredibly sordid scandal where he is steadfastly defending a Minister and his Chief of Staff who have been hiding secret financial set-ups in far-flung tax-havens.

Forget about it.