Is the prime minister being blackmailed?

Neville Gafa has not stopped embarrassing the government ever since he was given a job at Auberge de Castille as a person of trust last summer. His resignation yesterday was simply the result of a disgusting post on parents of LGBTIQ children that pushed the envelope too far. 

The responsibility for this mess lies squarely on the shoulders of Prime Minister Robert Abela, who opened his hands back to Gafa despite having kicked him out in 2020. 

The situation had become untenable and was causing disquiet even among the honest, hard-working rank and file of the Labour Party. The latter were seeing government’s work being upstaged by a maverick, who continued to act with impunity. 

The latest casualty of Gafa’s shenanigans was Nisa Laburisti executive secretary Jennifer Tabone—a long-time party activist from Żurrieq. She cited several differences with the party direction on policy for her resignation, but it is no secret that the straw that broke the camel’s back was Gafa’s indecorous attack on his blog—he called her a Repubblika stooge, with a poison-tipped tongue, among other adjectives. Her sin was a statement by Nisa Laburisti, which indirectly criticised Foreign Minister Ian Borg’s nomination of Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Not even Borg reacted negatively to the critique. 

What was worse though, was Robert Abela’s response when asked by MaltaToday about Gafa’s shenanigans. A very uncomfortable-looking prime minister justified Gafa’s right to say what he wants on the premise of free speech while at the same time distancing himself from his actions. 

What Abela could not see, or was unwilling to see, was that this was not an issue of free speech. Of course, Gafa has a right to be critical and say what comes to his mind. Indeed, that is what he has been doing on his blog replete with AI-generated text and images. 

But in his capacity as a person of trust at the Office of the Prime Minister, Gafa’s words started carrying more significance. As someone entrusted to take care of the OPM’s customer care, ordinary people were left wondering whether what he was saying enjoyed the blessing of his bosses—parliamentary secretary Andy Ellul and the prime minister. 

The constant stream of embarrassing incidents he was causing government had become a thorn in Abela’s side. 

Gafa is undoubtedly a Joseph Muscat loyalist, but his worldview is diametrically opposed to the Labour Party’s core values of inclusivity, equality and social justice. Gafa believes LGBTIQ+ rights are a threat to the traditional family, and gender equality an assault on the traditional patriarchal society. He recently lashed out at the government for proposing minor tweaks to several antiquated laws so that the concept of ‘parental’ rather than just ‘paternal’ authority is in introduced and definitions such as ‘workman’ are updated to the gender-neutral ‘worker’. 

Gafa champions the Trumpian doctrine, warts and all, and holds openly pro-Russia views—he almost acts as if he is President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson in Malta. He promotes the Putin propaganda that Ukraine is a Nazi state and the Russian invasion was Ukraine’s fault. With these views, Gafa should have never been given a position of trust in the OPM. The optics were not right and raised eyebrows even in diplomatic circles. 

And yet, Abela refused to budge, emboldening Gafa in the process until yesterday’s resignation. 

We cannot understand why the prime minister tied his wagon to that of a Russophile, traditionalist, who has embarked on a vicious campaign to smear Daphne Caruana Galizia’s name, even petitioning MEPs to reverse a decision to name a hall in the European Parliament after the journalist. But we are not surprised. 

Over the past 12 months, Abela has slowly reversed the pruning exercise he painstakingly undertook soon after becoming Labour leader in 2020 to rid the PL of those individuals from the Muscat era, who had dark clouds hanging over them. 

Abela’s admission that he communicates with Keith Schembri despite the latter facing multiple serious criminal charges that concern his time in public office was another slap in the face of decency. At this rate, we will not be surprised if Abela ropes in Schembri to help the PL run its electoral campaign. 

There is something fundamentally wrong with Abela’s decision to embrace people like Gafa and Schembri. In the circumstances, they bring no added value to the table. The PL has people who are capable to run an election campaign; it has people who can reach out to disgruntled voters; it has people who offer their free time to the party because they believe in its ideals. The PL does not need Gafa, Schembri and others from the Muscat era tainted with scandal anywhere around its corridors. Why Abela keeps insisting on saddling his party with this burden is beyond comprehension unless there is something more sinister about it. 

Is the prime minister being blackmailed by these people over something the rest of the country is not yet privy to? We certainly hope not.