Truth’s many guises - Steve Mallia

Impromptu public comments are an occupational hazard for the political class and the odd performer. “They tried to twist everything,” Michelle Muscat said live on air during a fundraising marathon for the Labour Party on Friday (charity begins and ends at home for political parties), “but people out there know the truth.”

Ms Muscat was no doubt un­aware of the irony, especially as her target was the media, and given that her remarks followed those of her husband Prime Minister who, now resigned to his political end being nigh, is doing what he can to pluck a legacy from the raging inferno.

Saying he is paying the political price for the fallout from the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation may earn him a modicum of sympathy, but not when he frames it – any pun is completely unintended – in the heroic context of succeeding to solve a politically-linked murder where his predecessors had failed.

Getting into the merits of the Karin Grech and Raymond Car­uana killings is unhelpful, but the bottom line is that prime ministers should never assume the roles of investigators especially, but especially when their colleagues may be implicated.

Yet, like so many facets to the Daphne...