You will remember Jennifer Lopez’s single Jenny from the Block in 2002. The chorus went something like this: “Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got / I’m still, I’m still Jenny from the block / Used to have a little, now I have a lot / No matter where I go, I know where I came from (from the Bronx!)”.
The song was meant to be autobiographical – a rags-to- riches tale of someone who’s still rooted in their background. Very touching and all that.
The only thing was that when it came out, it caused a stir among the residents of the Bronx neighbourhood. They could see through her act – J-Lo’s ditty was not motivated by love of her origins, she had turned her back on the Bronx the minute she had reached stardom.
In Malta we have our own J-Lo, and that’s none other than Keith Schembri, the chief of staff of the disgraced prime minister Joseph Muscat. You can just see Schembri, sashaying down the Cospicua waterfront, wearing a feather boa round his neck and crooning that he is a Laburist from the south. He thinks we can’t see the, um, crane, raining money on his head.
He’s singing from the poor-kid-from-the-hood hymn sheet, while more and more evidence of his unsocialist greed keeps surfacing. He seems to think that respect is all about location. Regardless of your political background, class or status or whether you’re from Bormla, Birguma or Burmarrad – what counts is your integrity.
And that is why, today, five years to that Easter day when journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia flagged the first signs of his corruption, Schembri is in jail, denied bail.
I wish I could say he’s eating humble figolla, but that’s unlikely – that’s not how crooked minds work. He is still scheming how to spin his way out of his mess, take back control and get his revenge. Let’s see him do that.
The amount of energy and planning and plotting that went into the corrupt deals coming to light in court is nothing short of a force of evil – down to the fact that they even parked their rot in a bank. Remember that bank, named after Pontius Pilate, where all the birds of a feather flocked together?
Along with Schembri and his Nexia BT buddy Brian Tonna, other exclusive clients included other alleged partners in crime: the former Allied Newspapers managing director Adrian Hillman and the Chinese chap Cheng Chen, who has now been revealed as the owner of the secret company, Macbridge.
Let’s recap a bit on this last one, shall we? Muscat’s Labour government sold off 30 per cent of our Enemalta in a €320 million deal, to a Chinese state-owned company, Shanghai Electric.
Chen, who struck this deal, was also the same guy who struck the rotten Montenegro wind farms deal (we paid €10.3 million for something which cost €3.5 million and Yorgen Fenech secretly siphoned €4.6 million into his 17 Black secret company).
The current prime minister – who was Muscat’s own cabinet advisor – is coping by copying Muscat’s manual: by showering the country with distractions- Kristina Chetcuti
Chen was a friend of Muscat’s right-hand men, Konrad Mizzi and Schembri. They were such good friends that they each bought a secret company in Panama at the same time. And Mizzi and Schembri were to receive an illicit €5,000 a day in their secret little companies from Fenech’s 17 Black and from Chen’s Macbridge.
These are all deals made with our money – by ‘our’ I mean all those of us who pay taxes – money which could have gone to hospitals, school equipment, subsidies to tackle poverty and so on.
When Caruana Galizia started revealing this rot, five Easters ago, Muscat, as the then prime minister, refused to acknowledge them, and not only stuck up for his mates but announced an early election to try and kill the stories.
As prime minister he failed to do his sole duty as a public officer: that of protecting the country from criminal offences. Consequently, Malta is paying for his crime. Daphne was assassinated and we have become an island of such ill repute that the amount of restrictions piled on us has made it practically impossible to do business out of Malta.
While we suffer the impact of all this on our industries, and while his “best friend” and “his trusted right-hand man” is in jail, Muscat cocks a snook and goes for picnics under carob trees with Mrs Muscat. Then he poses for photos to show that they have not a care in the world except for #springtime.
It has clearly become a survival strategy of the one who can best channel those J-Lo vibes: “I used to have a little, now I have a lot / I’m still, I’m still Joseph from the block”.
And in the meantime, the current prime minister – who was Muscat’s own cabinet advisor and applauded him every step of the way – is coping by copying Muscat’s manual: by showering the country with distractions.
So, Robert Abela gets Evarist Bartolo to write enigmatic messages at the brink of dawn and wheels out Ramona Attard to repeat age-old falsehoods; he’s brought up talk of abortion, cannabis, freemasons and other topics under the umbrella of “progressive Malta”.
We see this for what it is: noise to block the fact that Abela is trying to avoid doing what he should have done on day one in office – write to the police commissioner to investigate his former boss.
Meanwhile we fight on for justice, however many other Easters it will take us. It is the people against the mafia, but we will ultimately succeed because our resistance is motivated by love – of our country.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
twitter: @krischetcuti