Parliament descends into acrimony as Greece seeks urgent debate on hospitals inquiry

As news broke out that charges have been filed as a result of the hospitals inquiry led by magistrate Gabriella Vella – most prominently former prime minister Joseph Muscat – parliament descended into acrimony after opposition leader Bernard Grech requested an urgent parliamentary debate.

The request, which Grech said was motivated by the fact that Prime Minister Robert Abela had abusively gained access to the inquiry report while the public was denied it, was strongly opposed by the PM.

Abela pulled no punches in an intervention in which he refused to deny that the claim was true, and – after an interjection by Nationalist Party MP Karol Aquilina – even implied that Aquilina’s brother, Repubblika’s honorary president Robert Aquilina, had gained undue access to the inquiry when it was still in process. In doing so, naturally, he continued to cast aspersions on the integrity of magistrate Vella, keeping up the attacks that have earned him heavy criticism in recent days, including from the Chamber of Advocates.

Although the PM did not mention the activist by name, he clearly referred to Aquilina’s visit to Muscat’s home when it was being searched in January 2022, in connection with the inquiry.

“The true issue isn’t who has access to the procès-verbal today,” Abela said, in an intervention heavily peppered with legalisms, “but who knew what the procès-verbal would contain before the inquiry was over.”

After Grech once more mocked Abela’s continuous, and somewhat conspiratorial, references to the “establishment,” Abela resorted to another argument he commonly invokes when under fire: make insinuations about internal divisions within the PN.

“If someone asks me who the establishment is, I tell them to ask Adrian Delia,” he said, in reference to Delia’s ouster as PN leader in 2020 and his replacement with Grech.

This tactic appears to have backfired this time round, however, with Delia invoking a point of order – wrongly, as frequently happens when MPs wish to interrupt – to provide his answer.

“He asked me to describe who the establishment is,” Delia said.

“And my reply is that the establishment is that which claimed to give health to the Maltese and stole it,” he said, quoting Labour’s electoral slogan Sagha lill-Maltin.

“It is the one which stole three public hospitals, and the one which carried out the greatest fraud in Maltese history.”

Speaker Anġlu Farrugia repeatedly insisted that Delia cut his intervention short, before his frustrations boiled over and he switched off his mic, and the sitting was suspended to allow him to deliberate on Grech’s request. By then, however, Delia’s point had been made.

Meanwhile, on the opposition benches, MP Eve Borg Bonello used her laptop as an impromptu placard, attaching a sheet of paper to her back that appeared prominently her colleagues spoke.

In an apparent reference to the news that Muscat and his allies would be charged, this sheet portrayed none other than Daphne Caruana Galizia and two words: kulu raġun (she was right).