Support for whom?
David Carter, residing in Gozo for the past 20 years (December 17), feels frustrated the people are asking Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri to resign following his share in a recent scandal. Carter feels this is a trivial matter and, instead, Camilleri should be lauded for providing a quality of life for Gozitans and visitors, meaning the Victoria swimming pool and improvement of certain roads.
To make things clear, the people are not asking for the pound of flesh but only for justice to be done. Camilleri is being accused of employing Amanda Muscat, wife (then still girlfriend) of then minister Clayton Bartolo as a consultant when it resulted she was not qualified for the job. The Gozo ministry paid for Muscat’s job while it turned out she never did any consultancy for them. She pocketed more than €68,000 for doing nothing. No one in his right mind would describe this theft of tax payers’ money as trivial.
People elect representatives in parliament who, in turn, bind themselves by oath to safeguard the constitution and provide a better quality of life for the people who believed in them and the nation. Nowhere does it say that part of their job is to get rich overnight or by robbing people’s money.
One of the first things Camilleri should have done was to scrap the Greek boat Nicolaus, which is costing the Maltese coffers €14,000 daily (thanks to former Gozo minister Justyne Caruana) and order a new one just like former PN minister Giovanna Debono had done. Nicolaus lacks all the necessary commodities.
Carter thanked the minister for improving certain roads in Gozo. Let it be known that, by this time, the Labour government should have improved all roads in Malta and Gozo as had been promised, more so, after receiving millions from the European Union.
It appears Camilleri’s wife works as a full-time lawyer at the Gozo courts of justice while “supposedly” again, working full-time for Transport Malta in Gozo. Obviously being paid a full salary by TMG. Is this right too? Should we also be grateful and thank Camilleri and his wife for this scandalous behaviour?
This is not a case of giving Camilleri “a break and stop back-stabbing”, as Carter suggests. The Maltese want honest representatives in parliament and Camilleri is not. They rightly believe that he should resign as his position is no longer tenable.
Emily Barbaro-Sant – Mosta
MP’s impunity
When Clayton Bartolo makes vacuous comments about being “sorry” and that “nobody is perfect”; when Clint Camilleri abuses his ministerial power and acts with impunity; and when the prime minister says an “apology” is enough, I recall Jonathan Swift’s observation about politicians in his satire Gulliver’s Travels:
“Whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together.”
John Guillaumier – St Julian’s