Rosianne Cutajar was right when she said, “Kulħadd jitħanżer”.
Loosely translated into “everyone’s pigging out” or sucking at the public trough. Of course, she meant it as a justification for pigging out herself – or getting yet another state-funded job.
Cutajar was never content being a regular backbencher MP. Prior to being a parliamentary secretary, she spent some time acting as a commissioner for simplification and the reduction of bureaucracy – a position so utterly useless that it was abolished by Robert Abela.
Cutajar raked in €34,504 for whatever she did as commissioner for untangling red tape.
She also had an expense allowance equivalent to 25 per cent of the maximum of salary scale 7 of the civil service.
That coincided with her €20,000 a year consultancy at the Institute of Tourism Studies.
She seems to have been taken on by ITS CEO Pierre Fenech – incidentally another multitasking political appointee. Fenech leads two distinct government entities – the Institute of Tourism Studies and the Mediterranean Conference Centre – both of which fall under the tourism ministry. He has two separate contracts of engagement for two full-time posts.
Back to Cutajar. Despite the lucrative posts, she was still bemoaning her lot at that point because she hadn’t yet bagged a ministerial portfolio. Besides involving herself in property deals, taking up the cudgels in defence of Yorgen Fenech after he had given her a designer handbag and clothes, she was looking around for a cause to take up.
A bill on euthanasia? Discarded because, apparently, the president is not in favour of it. Fenech suggests mental health but Cutajar dismisses it as nothing new (“Ma hemm xejn ġdid”).
It’s got to be a totally brand new topic to be fitting for a bill for Cutajar to push. She was rather lackadaisical about promoting a bill about light pollution and immediately wrote it off, when Fenech nixed it.
Although this aspect of the exchange was not widely commented upon, it was perhaps as dispiriting as the feeding frenzy mentioned by Cutajar herself.
There are individuals, stakeholders, NGOs who feel very strongly about issues such as mental health and light pollution.
They would welcome the opportunity of an MP taking up their cause and would back up their position with research and studies which they would have carried out over the years.
They would be invested in the cause. And, yet, this highly-paid representative of the people dismisses their cause in much the same way as she would flick a speck of dandruff off her shoulder.
Apparently, the topics of euthanasia, mental health and light pollution were not sufficiently innovative and important enough to warrant her passionate espousal or to give her the platform which she felt she deserved.
Cutajar eventually resigned from the post of parliamentary secretary following a report by the standards commissioner that recommended that she be investigated by the tax authorities.
Prime Minister Robert Abela said that she paid a political price. The taxpayer actually paid a real price, as she received €28,000 by way of termination benefits.
Practically all [government] backbenchers are gifted lucrative consultancies and fictitious posts- Claire Bonello
According to the inane system applicable in Malta, ministers or parliamentary secretaries who resign their post get a generous golden handshake – even if they were forced out because of their misdeeds.
Cutajar is not unique. She is a product of two successive Labour administrations which actively encourages unjustified enrichment by its exponents. Practically all backbenchers are gifted lucrative consultancies and fictitious posts.
Some head resource-sucking quangos and make them their own personal fiefdom with the power to ‘employ’ unnecessary workers and engage even more consultants.
Cutajar and her peers have gorged for so long on the public teat that they have completely lost sight of what they were elected to do – further the interests of their constituents and act in the public interest.
Faced with the evidence of their unethical sponging and collusion with business interests, they have the cheek to play the victim card, when the real victims are the Maltese people – landed with parliamentarians who are so spectacularly unfit for office and rewarded handsomely for being so.
The Vitals/Stewards saga is another example of the shameful betrayal of the Maltese people by its elected representatives. The way the initial concession was engineered to be granted to Vitals bears the hallmark of Labour’s modus operandi for dodgy deals.
First, there was a secret memorandum of understanding ensuring that Vitals got the concession. When it became overwhelmingly obvious that milestones were being missed with abandon, there was the hasty shift to Stewards.
And, then, on August 27, 2019, Konrad Mizzi signed a secret agreement with Steward through which it was ensured they would make off with €100 million and have all their debts paid by Maltese citizens if the concession was stopped.
What politician could sign a deal which prejudiced the nation’s interest in such a way?
Who would deliberately score such a massive own goal, burdening the health care system in this obscene way? How could a deal of such epic proportions go by unscrutinised by the rest of the cabinet? When I see Labour politicians hugging sick children and pretending to be champions of the injured and elderly, my stomach turns.
No reputationlaundering can wash away a betrayal of such magnitude.