Robert Abela seeks his pound of flesh

Robert Abela is still at it, working diligently to destroy The Shift, the news portal that keeps exposing Labour’s seedy and sleazy scandals. But now, he’s stepped up a gear.

The Prime Minister is trying to discover who is providing The Shift with the financial oxygen it requires to survive. And it’s surely not to thank them for their civic contribution towards upholding free speech and transparency.

On 17 April, through Joseph Muscat’s lawyer Pawlu Lia, Robert Abela demanded that The Shift reveal more information about its donors and contributors, insisting he needs to establish whether the website’s revenue was affected by his unsubstantiated claims that The Shift’s articles are 90% fake.

In January 2025, Abela had said that “there is a fake news blog, The Shift News, which specialises in reporting falsehoods”. He cynically insisted that The Shift’s “only agenda” is “to promote falsehood and evil”.

The Shift had already submitted to the court four years’ worth of all its financial accounts, but Abela wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to know exactly who is funding The Shift.

The Shift refused to reveal who those donors were. It argued that providing their names was tantamount to revealing its sources.

Why is Abela so desperate to find out who’s backing The Shift? Maybe he intends to punish them for enabling the news portal to continue to expose the abuses committed by his government and cabinet members.

Does he intend to pay them back for their part in embarrassing him by enabling public scrutiny?

The hostility against The Shift was evident in court. The Prime Minister’s lawyer accused the Shift of writing “sensationalist headlines” and of “fomenting hatred”, doubling down on the false claims Abela himself made.

That’s not the rhetoric of a democratic leader – that’s straight from the playbook of a repressive autocrat.

Critical journalism is an essential check on state power. When the mighty know their abuses will never be exposed, they’ll be emboldened to commit more of them.

Muzzling the media unleashes more corruption. For politicians who want to rob the public, gagging the free press is a priority. The more incriminating secrets they are guilty of, the greater their obsession with stifling critical reporting.

To achieve that, nothing is off limits. The Labour Party has a long track record of demonising critics and relentlessly targeting them, publishing hit pieces in their “news” portals and inciting a torrent of abuse and threats against critics from its blindly loyal supporters.

In fact, evidence was submitted in court showing that The Shift’s editor has received threats and has been targeted by Abela’s government throughout her entire career.

Abela has long sought to create a media ecosystem in which praise for his government is amplified and faint whispers of dissent are further silenced.

Millions upon millions of taxpayers’ cash is diverted towards fawning coverage from the national broadcaster PBS, which has been packed with loyal sycophants and adoring yes-men. Abela has been deviously directing state advertising budgets towards pliant newspapers and friendly media houses and TV channels.

At the same time, Abela has been doing his utmost to make it harder for this website to survive. He’s burned through substantial public funds to push 40 legal challenges against this website, clearly aiming to stop their Freedom of Information requests.

But now, Abela wants to know who is backing the Shift, who is funding it, who is propping it up.

There’s only one reason Abela wants that information – to lean on those companies, firms and individuals and force them to shun The Shift. Abela has many tools at his disposal: the random tax audit, a VAT review, a possible vexatious lawsuit, or simply excluding them from government contracts.

Abela knows that outlets like The Shift are financially precarious. Scaring away even some donors would be sufficient to cripple the news outlet.

Even the very threat that their identity may be revealed to Abela and his party may be enough for those donors to think twice before continuing to support the news portal. They know Abela has no scruples. He had no qualms “discussing” the Opposition Leader’s tax matters with the disgraced former Tax Commissioner Marvin Gaerty.

The Shift has been a thorn in Abela’s side. He’s determined to destroy it.

The Shift’s founder and editor Caroline Muscat and her small team have been doxxed and harassed. Caroline Muscat herself has been in Abela’s crosshairs for a long time. Abela sees this court case as a golden opportunity to turn the screws on the investigative website.

Just last week, Mark Gaffarena and his wife were in the dock.

Gaffarena had been purchasing parts of properties in Valletta for peanuts, only for the government to proceed to expropriate that part of a property and compensate Gaffarena multiple times over.

In 2013, Gaffarena was compensated with a package of land and cash worth €822,500 for a quarter-share of a Valletta property that he paid just €23,000 for.

Soon after, he was paid another €822,500 by the Labour government for another quarter property he had paid just €140,000 for. In less than two months, Gaffarena made a €685,000 profit from taxpayers’ funds thanks to Labour.

If it weren’t for the meticulous and arduous investigative reporting of Caroline Muscat, that shocking scandal would never have been exposed.

Labour placed every possible obstacle in her way. Information was withheld, official documents that should have been publicly available were not even filed, a notary who was expected at a meeting with the journalist failed to show up after he was allegedly hit on the head by a falling gate.

The depressing part of the story is that despite the overwhelming evidence uncovered by the investigative journalist, it’s taken ten years for the Gaffarena couple to start to face justice.

What’s even more shocking is that Michael Falzon, Joseph Muscat’s Parliamentary Secretary at the time who was forced to resign over the scandal, is still a minister in Robert Abela’s Cabinet.

It appears Abela’s appetite for punishment is only reserved for those who continue exposing his administration’s crimes.