PM says Keith Schembri will be back “very, very soon” – just like Konrad Mizzi’s fictitious audit
When the Prime Minister said that his chief of staff will be back in the office “very, very soon”, he should have been asked how long Schembri has been away and why they’ve been colluding to hide it, why no explanation was given even though Schembri was conspicuously absent at some very high-profile events involving the Prime Minister, like the visit some weeks ago by the prime ministers of the Netherlands and Slovakia, where he was accompanied instead by Glenn Bedingfield.
And when the Prime Minister said that reports of his chief of staff’s terminal illness are “a lie” and “fake news”, he should have been asked why, in that case, Schembri himself did not immediately issue a statement saying so, instead of keeping silent.
Muscat was stopped by journalists as he left the launch event for Crane Currency’s Malta operation, which only served to highlight his chief of staff’s conspicuous absence. The last time Schembri was seen publicly at his boss’s side was at a press conference, two and a half months ago, to announce that Crane would be setting up in Malta. Then, Muscat thanked Schembri profusely, saying he was instrumental in making the arrangements for Crane. This made Schembri’s absence today unavoidably noteworthy.
The Prime Minister should also have been challenged about the nature of Schembri’s illness. He called the report of terminal cancer “a lie”, so this makes it incumbent on him to say what the illness is. He can’t describe news reports as “lies” without given the truth. Why was he allowed to get away with that? I suppose it’s because even journalists are fastidious of saying the word ‘cancer’ aloud or asking what’s wrong with Schembri to have kept him away from the office so long.
The Prime Minister told us almost a year ago that the (fictitious) ‘international audit’ into Konrad Mizzi’s business affairs would be ready “very soon” too, but he’s now clearly hoping that we’ve forgotten all about that real lie. The lie was the audit, and not the deadline. You can’t have a deadline for delivery when there was never going to be anything to deliver.
And when I reported back in February that Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri had set up secret companies in Panama, they dismissed that as a lie, too, and got to work badmouthing me and calling me a liar – until the story broke internationally, documentary proof and all, and they could do nothing about it.
And this is just a side-note here: the government’s head of communications, Kurt Farrugia (the little one standing behind the Prime Minister) is looking really, really bad too. They all are. Something is going on, and it isn’t pretty.
