PANAMAGATE: The Prime Minister asks journalists to investigate “overseas assets of PN MPs”

Typical. Appearing for the first time since last Sunday, to give a press conference at his office today, the Prime Minister stood there and like a cercura on a street corner let off one tu quoque lead balloon after another.

“GHAX MA TMURX TARA X’TAGHMEL INT?”

“GHAX MA TMURX TARA DIK IT-TIFLA LI GHANDEK?”

“GHAX MA TMURX TARA ID-DAR INKALLATa TIEGHEK? JA MARA MAHMUGA!”

All he needed was a broom and a head full of curlers.

And one of the things he said was that journalists should investigate whether Opposition MPs have overseas assets. Journalists should investigate? I mean, honestly.

His press conference was frightening. Michael Falzon, Manuel Mallia, Godfrey Farrugia and Anglu Farrugia were all booted out when it suited him to do so. But Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri have embroiled him – I say that to be generous – in the worst political scandal of the last 30 years, and he’s prepared to sink while defending them to the hilt, even making out today – farcically – that the case is closed because his henchman ‘paid a fine’. As if this case is about a breach of the Income Tax Management Act and a wholesale scandal with asset-concealing vehicles set up in Panama by his chief of staff and his chief minister in concert with each other.

And the press hasn’t even woken up yet to the small and insignificant matter of whether the Prime Minister should have appointed a chief of staff who owned, at the time of his appointment, secret companies in the offshore tax haven of the British Virgin Islands which were set up for the express purpose of massive tax evasion on a scale which indicates illicit rather than licit business operations.

But more about that later.