Opinion: Robert Abela’s ongoing humiliation of Justyne Caruana

Just days before Christmas 2021, then-minister Justyne Caruana was utterly humiliated by Prime Minister Robert Abela.  She was forced to resign in disgrace after being found in breach of ethics by the Standards Commissioner for awarding her “close friend” Daniel Bogdanović a €15,000 contract.

Bogdanović was meant to write up a report which was actually written by Minister Caruana’s consultant, Paul Debattista, a former aide to disgraced former European Commissioner John Dalli. Bogdanović was paid exorbitantly for a job he was not qualified for and which he couldn’t perform.

Former minister Justyne Caruana suffered the ultimate indignity of being kicked out of Abela’s cabinet practically on Christmas Eve. Now, Abela is heaping more humiliation on Caruana.

Ministers Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri have done far worse than Caruana.  They appointed Bartolo’s girlfriend as a consultant when she neither had the qualifications nor the expertise and gave her a €70,000 a year financial package, deceiving the public by pretending that Bartolo’s girlfriend was no longer working with her lover and then lied profusely under oath before the Standards Commissioner.

Both Bartolo and Camilleri have been found guilty of breaching ethics.  The Commissioner declared he could not believe their statements.  And yet, the prime minister accepted Bartolo’s half-hearted apology as sufficient for their total exoneration.

Camilleri didn’t even bother with any apology, not even a half-hearted one. But Abela insisted they would both remain cabinet ministers as if nothing had happened.

Nobody can understand Robert Abela’s leniency with the two men, especially when he dealt so severely with their female counterpart, Justyne Caruana, whose infractions paled into insignificance compared to theirs.

Abela was challenged several times.  Why are you protecting Bartolo and Camilleri when you dumped Caruana? He told NET News: “Whenever I felt I had to dump somebody, since that is the terminology the Opposition uses, there were good reasons.”  That’s another twist of the blade in Caruana’s back.

Abela went further.  In his desperate attempt to justify his moral somersaults, he detailed why Caruana had to go while Bartolo and Camilleri could stay.

Abela said Amanda Muscat’s ” was not a phantom job… This is why I make a distinction from previous cases.”

He added: “The person in question worked her hours; it’s not a case of a person who wasn’t attending at her place of work, but a person who gave all the hours of work with the government of Malta.”

“The work was done with the Ministry of Tourism instead of for the Gozo ministry, but these are ministries that are part of one government – she was working for the Government of Malta,” Abela insisted.

That’s not what the Commissioner’s report states.  “Her email account shows no evidence that she performed any consultancy work,” the Commissioner noted.  “The heads of secretariat of both (ministers) admitted that they had no documentation of any work done by Mrs Muscat, and they tried to justify this deficiency”.

The Commissioner insisted, “She did not do any work related to her appointment”.

The Standards Commissioner trawled through her email box.  He couldn’t find a single email relating to any policy or any other work remotely related to consultancy.  She never communicated with her head of secretariat, Michael Buhagiar, via email.  The Commissioner could not find any email communication with Minister Clint Camilleri either.

But when the Standards Commissioner trawled through Bogdanović’s email account he found several emails relating to the report that he was contracted to write.

In paragraph 145 of his report, the Commissioner declared that Bogdanović had sent questions written by Paul Debattista, had sent requests for information to the head of the National School for Sport.  He had sent material he collected to Debattista to help him write the report.

Bogdanović, according to the Commissioner, probably wrote section 4.5 of the report.  The data presented in sections 5.5 and 5.6 of the report were probably collected by Bogdanović, the Commissioner concluded.

Abela is being dishonest when he implies that Amanda Muscat worked her guts out while Bogdanović did nothing. Quite the opposite, if the Commissioner is correct.

Yet here is Abela trying to peddle the myth that Amanda Muscat worked all the hours for the government while Bogdanović did absolutely nothing. That is his excuse for tiptoeing around his two powerful ministers. He’s trying to figure out new pathetic excuses for his feebleness and inaction.

Why did Abela kick out former minister Justyne Caruana and MP Rosianne Cutajar while he kept defending the shocking abuse by Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri?

Why is Abela so terrified of Camilleri that he won’t even force an apology out of him? Why does Abela treat his male cabinet ministers so differently from female ones? Is the macho bodybuilder just a scared chicken deep inside?

Caruana deserved to be kicked out.  Cutajar even more so.  They’re lucky that all they got was a little rap on the knuckles and a generous lump sum of money for their termination.

In any functioning democracy, they would have been criminally investigated and prosecuted.  But Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri should face the same consequences.

Their behaviour is even more outrageous.  They robbed the state of tens of thousands of euro to reward Bartolo’s girlfriend by appointing her to a post far beyond her skills, competence or qualifications. They then devised a devious scheme to cover up the fact that she was still working with her boyfriend. And then proceeded to lie repeatedly under oath to the Commissioner.

Meanwhile, the prime minister meekly insists that Clayton’s apology is enough. Abela is a compromised coward. He is petrified that Bartolo and Camilleri could bring his whole government down.