Prime Minister Joseph Muscat heaped praise on Sai Mizzi Laing for her work in attracting Chinese company Huawei to Malta in July 2015. “Malta and @Huawei sign agreement on R+D centre, #SafeCity, 4.5G in preparation for 5G, training of Maltese students,” Muscat tweeted. And signed off JM.
Last week, Malta’s Labour government announced that SafeCity is no more. Muscat’s and Sai Mizzi’s fabulous project will be dissolved. Another Muscat white elephant bites the dust – but not before flushing millions of taxpayers’ money down the drain or, rather, into some people’s pockets.
In typical Labour hyperbole, Muscat announced that a deal had been struck with Chinese technology giant Huawei. “This is the first major result of the decision made by my government to appoint Ms Mizzi Laing despite stiff criticism,” Muscat declared. He joked that, on hearing how much profit Huawei made annually, he thought to himself that Huawei could easily bail out Greece.
Huawei was meant to implement a controversial facial recognition CCTV system that would be launched in problem spots such as Paceville and Marsa but which would be rolled out throughout the country.
Muscat bragged that Huawei would set up a joint innovation centre to develop SafeCity solutions in Malta.
Muscat’s then parliamentary secretary, José Herrera added to the hype. He described the deal signed with Huawei as “a great achievement for the country”. He claimed the deal “will allow Malta to prosper… making citizens’ lives better”. Ominously, Huawei confirmed it would develop the innovation centre aimed to help “public administration react to threats”.
Herrera appointed Joseph Cuschieri, President George Vella’s son-in-law and Yorgen Fenech’s travelling partner, to work with Mizzi Laing on negotiations with Huawei. Herrera claimed that Cuschieri was appointed because of his “technical expertise”. Cuschieri made even wilder claims of his own. “Huawei will support Malta in its digital strategy including Fibre to the Home… we aim to cover all localities with fibre optic services”.
Everybody warned Labour that Huawei wasn’t a good idea. Joseph Cannataci, the UN special rapporteur on privacy, pointed out that only the risk of terror attacks could justify such blatant invasion of privacy. Setting up face recognition systems using Chinese technology was nothing short of crazy.
Robert Strayer, the then US deputy assistant secretary for cyberattacks, voiced his serious concerns that Malta was allowing Huawei access to data that could “be exploited for authoritarian purposes”. He pointed out that Malta’s SafeCity data would be compromised by Huawei’s link to the Chinese state. But the comical Cuschieri dismissed Strayer’s warnings as “just one of many opinions”.
“Everyone has a right to his or her opinion,” was Cuschieri’s idiotic comment. That ‘opinion’ was backed by intelligence data of the US State Department and by revelations coming from the UK which identified hundreds of vulnerabilities in Huawei software. Besides, as Strayer pointed out, Chinese law compels companies to “cooperate with intelligence and security services without independent judicial controls”.
In what looked like a gallery of rogues, Cuschieri stood next to Mizzi Laing as Muscat bombastically announced the “great achievement”. Mizzi Laing, with Cuschieri’s technical expertise, had brought Huawei to Malta. Muscat said that “more similar investments from China would be announced in the near future”. Seven years later, we’re still waiting for that next announcement.
Labour has now quietly made known that the agreement with Huawei has expired and that it will not be renewed- Kevin Cassar
Instead of biting her tongue and keeping quiet, Mizzi Laing taunted the nation with her sarcastic comments at that press conference. “You finally found me,” she said, “you may have read all sorts of things about me online, don’t believe them.”
“I am thrilled to introduce Huawei to Malta,” she announced.
One intrepid journalist was not deterred. He asked Muscat what real benefit the agreement with Huawei would bring the country. Muscat drifted off on a foggy histrionic speech intended to impress: “I dread to imagine or put pen to paper right now on the total effect because the domino effect on the economy and the actual infrastructure to make island wide testing of just one single technology is not small.”
He impressed nobody. The journalist prodded him: “It’s important because we are forking out money, €13,000 a month, for the job Miss Mizzi Laing is conducting in Shanghai.”
Muscat’s chubby rubicund face suddenly turned vicious as the red mist took over. (You should really watch the video .) Trying unsuccessfully to contain himself in the presence of Huawei officials, Muscat spluttered: “I think that is honestly something we can do in a political meeting. That is not the way to behave in front of our foreign guests”, he admonished.
“I’m just asking a simple question”, the reporter replied.
“It looked like a stupid question to our guests,” Muscat retorted with typical pugnacious hostility.
That question wasn’t stupid. It was pretty prescient. Sai Mizzi never sealed any other deals. Yet, she still hoovered up hundreds of thousands of our money. Add to that the €400,000 annual budget Muscat’s and, later Robert Abela’s Labour administrations pumped into SafeCity every year, taxpayers have forked out millions of euros on another fake initiative. And what does Labour have to show for its extravagance on Sai Mizzi’s remuneration and SafeCity? Absolutely nothing.
Labour has now quietly made known that the agreement with Huawei has expired and that it will not be renewed. “SafeCity will no longer continue to function,” the ministry for tourism announced. SafeCity never functioned. Even as SafeCity lies on its deathbed, Labour tries to ram fiction down our throat, attempting to convince us that SafeCity was ever a viable entity.
Daphne Caruana Galizia, as always, twigged pretty early that SafeCity was another Labour scam. In July 2015, she uploaded a post titled ‘Huawei’s 5G testing: that’s not investment in Malta by any definition’.
Under that post, a certain Mark Bartolo commented: “A BIG Thank You to Ms Sai Mizzi Liang (sic) for this huge undertaking”. Caruana Galizia retorted in her inimical style: “You poor thing.”
Kevin Cassar is a professor of surgery.