AMQ Streams: cluster operator fails to start, with a certificate parsing exception

Issue

In a new installation of AMQ Streams, the cluster operator fails to start. Its log shows the following exception:

2018-12-21 19:38:02 INFO  Main:70 - ClusterOperator is starting
Exception in thread "main" io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.KubernetesClientException: An error has occurred.
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.KubernetesClientException.launderThrowable(KubernetesClientException.java:62)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.KubernetesClientException.launderThrowable(KubernetesClientException.java:53)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.utils.HttpClientUtils.createHttpClient(HttpClientUtils.java:168)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.BaseClient.<init>(BaseClient.java:55)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.BaseClient.<init>(BaseClient.java:47)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.DefaultKubernetesClient.<init>(DefaultKubernetesClient.java:70)
        at io.strimzi.operator.cluster.Main.main(Main.java:73)
Caused by: java.security.cert.CertificateException: Could not parse certificate: java.io.IOException: Empty input
        at sun.security.provider.X509Factory.engineGenerateCertificate(X509Factory.java:110)
        at java.security.cert.CertificateFactory.generateCertificate(CertificateFactory.java:339)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.internal.CertUtils.createTrustStore(CertUtils.java:93)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.internal.CertUtils.createTrustStore(CertUtils.java:71)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.internal.SSLUtils.trustManagers(SSLUtils.java:114)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.internal.SSLUtils.trustManagers(SSLUtils.java:93)
        at io.fabric8.kubernetes.client.utils.HttpClientUtils.createHttpClient(HttpClientUtils.java:63)
        ... 4 more
Caused by: java.io.IOException: Empty input
        at sun.security.provider.X509Factory.engineGenerateCertificate(X509Factory.java:106)
... 10 more