Lawrence Gonzi in the part of Aron Ralston?

Aron Ralston’s name may not be familiar with everyone but you may have heard about the James Franco movie that was made about his story – 127 Hours. One fine day Ralston went out hiking in Utah and fell to the bottom of a large canyon. As he fell a boulder moved and his arm was stuck in between. He spent 127 hours stuck down there with no help coming, and was all by himself.

The reflective part that comes out of his story is that once we are stuck between a rock and a hard place there’s little room to wriggle out and we must reflect and act with whatever tough decisions are needed.

Without knowing, Lawrence Gonzi ended up in the shoes of Aron Ralston – he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place and there’s nowhere to go. Does he really want to continue where he is… stuck and nowhere to go?

The second the oil corruption scandal came to light Lawrence Gonzi started reading from a script which he didn’t write for himself. It was never meant to finish like this. It is a part he never wanted to play, but when the lights were switched on and he realised there was an audience, he had to follow a script. Almost two years on, the lights are now off and the audience is no longer there, so why bother with defending the indefensible? Why keep covering for people who have shown no empathy or remorse and who still remain at large, and for some former colleagues with a chance of going back to the old ways in future elections?

This week the Enemalta oil scandal made the headlines once again in the media. The former Prime Minister, as the English language neatly puts it, is now in a sticky situation. Just like script writers need a timeline of events and important dates in their story, he needs to start one to keep up with what he said, to whom and when, as things are getting out of hand.

 On January 23, 2013, the then Prime Minister had said that he learned of the scandal from MaltaToday. Pressed a month later, as more context of the scandal was made public, he was asked by MaltaToday on when he was made aware of the wrongdoing and Lawrence Gonzi replied:

Jien dejjem sostnejt pubblikament illi meta kelli xi informazzjoni dejjem irreferejtom direttament lil Kummissarju tal-Pulizija ghaliex huwa id-dover tal-awtoritajiet kostituzzjonali f’pajjizna jerfghu ir-responsabilta’ tal-investigazzjoni… ghandhom l-poteri li l-ligi ma taghtix lil haddiehor. Id-dover tieghi dejjem hekk qdejt, illi kull rapport li kelli, kien x’kien u gej min fejn gej, ghaddejtu lill-awtoritajiet kompetenti. (Freely translated: I always maintained publicly that when I had some information I always referred it directly to the Commissioner of Police because it is the duty of the constitutional authorities in our country to shoulder the responsibility of investigation… they have powers the law does not give to others. I always carried out my duties in this manner, of passing every report I had, whatever it was, and coming from whichever source, to the competent authorities).

 This statement is on YouTube and can be viewed from this link - http://youtu.be/cdGAE76MkbA.

What is really interesting here is that he doesn’t confirm that he knew about it, but that ‘when information came to me’ he passed it on. At first, Gonzi mentions the Police Commissioner, but then quickly goes back on that, and refers to the “competent authorities’’ instead. This is an important distinction.

The ‘information’ that came to him was from one of the Malta Security Services officers serving as his personal bodyguard, who had been passed a file full of documents about the oil corruption scandal. This bodyguard wanted to pass the file to the Prime Minister, but Gonzi quickly made sure to wash his hands of it and told his bodyguard to give it to his boss. The bodyguard obeyed and took it to the Security Services.

Gonzi, in a statement this week, said documents of this type never made it to him. It’s a play on words – he never opened the documents or read them… he didn’t even want to have anything to do with them, strong on the argument that it’s not his job to investigate.

The person that went to him with this information, back in May, 2012, was not a police officer, but an officer within the Security Service who was later questioned by the police when all this came out. This is the reason the former Prime Minister had to correct himself and say the “competent authorities’’ because the top tier of the Security Service, is not the same as the Police Commissioner. However it can be classified as a “competent authority”.

If the former Prime Minister is not aware of all these details, can PN MP Claudio Grech (who used to be the right hand man of former Minister Austin Gatt) perhaps help to provide them? What does Grech know about the story of the file of documents on the oil scandal that was taken to the Security Service almost two years ago, in which important parts of it, such as emails, were shredded, while part of the documents were sent on to the Tax Compliance Unit for investigation? Who is going to tell the former Prime Minister that all this took place after contact was made between the Security Services and a person working in the secretariat of a ministry?

Many people are still shocked by the scale of the scandal, and how institutional it was. When one component left and someone else was appointed instead, within that same structure, the illicit system continued to function without even a hitch. This went on for years, even as positions and faces changed within the organisation. It was a coordinated system of corruption and not a case of one person stealing some money from the cash drawer.

While others drink gin and tonic in Marsalforn, Lawrence Gonzi needs to decide whether he’s ready to continue taking responsibility for what others under his administration did or make sure there’s enough distance between himself and those involved in such goings on.

Just like Ralston in ‘127 hours’, he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Gonzi does not have to be in that place. Our star of the story, Ralston, ended up cutting part of his arm to break free.

Why does Gonzi not learn from the Ralston story?