Does Joseph know what a Whistleblower Act actually is?

Yesterday, during an interview,  in relation to the Enemalta oil procurement investigation, Joseph Muscat is reported as having said that: "a whistleblower act would have avoided all this because politicians, who may have an interest in the case that comes before them, will have no say in who gets a pardon."


Frankly, this is just another chapter in a series of misguided manipulations we are witnessing in this campaign by an ex-Super One reporter who knows no better.

Let's get things straight. The impression that the Whistleblower Act is the be-all and end-all of solving corruption, which Joseph Muscat has been trying to give, is false.

The Whistleblower act is "an act to make provision for procedures in terms of which employees in both the private sector and the public administration may disclose information regarding improper practices by their employers or other employees in the employ of their employers and to protect employees who make said disclosures from detrimental action."

In simple words, it protects the employees who disclose the information about abuses at their place of work from suffering any vindictive or detrimental action for having done so. It goes a long way in encouraging people who encounter or happen to learn about corruption to come forward, and that's why a draft bill has been presented to Parliament and I'm totally in its favour, but it does not attempt to stop and address all forms of corruption, and we would be fooling ourselves if we say that it does.

The Whistleblower Act has nothing to do with a Presidential pardon. It has nothing to do with someone being involved himself in a crime, being granted a pardon in return for information and turning state-witness to uncover the truth in a particular scandal (in this case, a pardon on the terms that the repayment of any illegal proceeds made and an additional payment of €250,000 to government that must be carried out within five days from its granting).

The whistleblower in this case is not Mr. Farrugia. It is MaltaToday and whoever disclosed the information (who did the right thing as these abuses and every form of corruption needs to be uncovered and investigated). Whistleblower or no whistleblower act would have had no effect on the granting of a pardon to someone involved in the crime to uncover the whole web behind this scandal. One could argue that we need to reform the process by which someone is granted a pardon, but that is an issue completely unrelated to the whistleblower act itself.

Saying that the Whistleblower Act means that politicians "would have no say in the granting of pardons" is either a statement of sheer stupidity or of barefaced lying. And given that we're dealing with the ex-Super One "Made in Brussels" reporter, it is probably a mixture of both.