This summer, I was almost crushed in my car by two different bus drivers with little sense of road safety.
Who knows, maybe Clint Mansueto, Transport Malta’s director of licensing, helped them get their licence.
The Sunday Times of Malta has revealed a scandal of such proportions that anything is possible. Everyone’s aghast at the scale of the racket and the chortling at some incompetents who were set loose upon the streets.
Exchanging messages with an aide to Ian Borg, then transport minister, Mansueto said a licence applicant was “really hopeless” but had passed anyway because “I’m really good” (adding a tears-of-laughter emoji).
Last year, a driving examiner testified in court that Mansueto had told him that, unless a particular candidate finished the test splattered in blood, he had to pass.
Robert Abela insists there is no racket, only “irregularities” in a system whose aim is to “help”. How about helping the rest of us drivers, then? We have an L-plate to warn us to be wary of learning drivers. How about an H-plate for those ‘helped’ by Abela’s government so that we could stay well clear at the roundabouts?
Abela has made the racket his own. He’s defended it as an intrinsic part of the political system. He waxes indignant about the outrage, thinking we’ve forgotten that this licensing scandal comes in the wake of others involving the traffic police and social benefits, among others.
If Abela really wants to demonstrate that the “irregularities” are a bug, not a feature of the political system he champions, he owes us plausible alternative explanations to what we’ve read with our own eyes.
The evidence shows that – contrary to what Abela claims – government customer care officials were colluding in the racket. Consider what we’ve learned about every stage of the process.
First, the requests were not innocent. It’s not just what you say; it’s how you say it.
Why were some coded? Fr Joe Mizzi told Borg: “Pray for my nephew […] tomorrow.” Borg, not exactly renowned for his life of prayer, took it all in his long stride instead of being puzzled: “In my hands.”
Why use code if there’s nothing wrong being said? If the police were serious, Fr Mizzi would be asked this under oath.
Note the word “tomorrow”. This wasn’t a request about unfair delays in the system. The nephew’s exam was already fixed. What else needed fixing?
In another case, the request came from Borg’s head of customer care, Glorianne Micallef Portelli. The test was near – no problem with delays. The issue lay with the daughter of friends “who help us” and who had failed twice. “Can we help?”
On another occasion, Mansueto was told that examiners had twice not been “fair” with an applicant. Could he see that they would be “fair” this time?
If the system was so regularly unfair, what is the prime minister doing defending it? He should be energetically reforming it- Ranier Fsadni
If the system was so regularly unfair, what is the prime minister doing defending it? He should be energetically reforming it. If it isn’t regularly unfair, then how does he explain these messages? I’d really like to hear him.
If it was simply about smoothing the tangled bureaucratic path of applicants, why would Mansueto complain that some requests were from people who weren’t even from the minister’s electoral district? Explain that.
Second, there is the accommodation of the requests. If the accommodation was straightforward, why all the sensitivity to numbers?
Mansueto didn’t like it when there was a large number of applicants wanting “help”. Nor did he like it when one person, asking for “help”, was due to sit for an exam with a large number of other candidates. He advised her not to turn up for that exam.
Don’t turn up for an exam. And don’t turn up with your instructor. Ordinarily, if you want a licence it helps to turn up for the exam. Your instructor’s presence gives you confidence.
So why did Mansueto say this, prime minister? The only plausible explanation is that the numbers made it more difficult to engineer the desired results.
Finally, there is the way the results were discussed. If customer care is concerned only to smooth the bureaucratic way, why did Mansueto feel the need to be apologetic about reporting a fail, while preening himself on a pass?
He famously explained one applicant couldn’t possibly pass because he was a “killer”. On another, he gave a litany of failings and then ended by saying that the instructor had also been along for the ride. The clear implication: the failings could have been forgiven but not with an expert outside witness.
These replies were given to ministry aides, who never wondered what he meant, nor understood and reported something was wrong. At least one was astounded the applicant had passed. Another was glad that any subsequent danger to life was in the newly licensed driver’s hands.
Government aides had no problem understanding what Mansueto meant, prime minister, nor did they object to it. If you insist on defending your government, tell us how you interpret these exchanges.
Finally, Mansueto understood Ray Mizzi – then a customer care official in your office, prime minister – when he asked for special treatment for an applicant in the hope of getting his vote (before deciding the effort wasn’t worth it).
If you are so repelled by this behaviour, prime minister, what was Mizzi doing participating in the televised Labour donations marathon on Sunday – the very day the story broke?
You not only did not distance yourself from him. You made him one of the faces of the political party you lead.
Explain that, prime minister, and employers, the medics, the insurers, parents of children on the roads, and the rest of us, will be ready to revise our view that you are shameless.
Meanwhile, we’ve heard you clearly: you’ve embraced the racket and have no intention of stopping.