Politics can make strange bedfellows…

It has emerged that PL activist Neville Gafà and Repubblika lawyer Jason Azzopardi both agree there was something funny about the way the charges were issued in the Vitals court case.

In an open message to PL strategist Aleander Balzan, Gafà asked him to come clean on who decided to charge the 40 suspects, including former Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne, in the middle of an election campaign.

“Can you tell us who was in so much of a rush and why?” he asked. “The magistrate carried out the inquiry but her work stopped there, and other people decided when and how the charges were issued.”

“Who decided to issue the charges in the middle of an election campaign? They could have been issued a month, two months, three months later, and no one would have batted an eyelid because the inquiry took four years to conclude. The people have a right to know.”

As has been confirmed by a police inspector in court, the police didn’t investigate the Vitals hospitals deal or interrogate any of the suspects. Instead, they assisted magistrate Gabriella Vella in terms of carrying out searches and summoning witnesses and relied solely on her findings.

Inspector Wayne Borg said that the decision not to investigate was taken by Angelo Gafà himself, along with Assistant Commissioner Fabian Fleri and superintendent Hubert Cini.

Azzopardi shared Neville Gafà’s post and said that, while he disagrees with him on 1,000 things, his analysis is spot on in this case. He took it a step further and claimed that Prime Minister Robert Abela ordered Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg and Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà to hurry up with the charges for three main reasons.

He suggested Abela had a three-pronged strategy – he wanted to allow the accused to make a legal case that their rights were breached, he wanted to isolate the magistrate further, and he hoped to politically capitalise on a wave of public support in favour of Joseph Muscat.

“What dirt and wrongdoing,” he said. “Castille is still a criminal’s den. I said the same thing a month and a half ago when the charges were presented.”