I watched Lionel Messi’s performance the other day. It was quite unlike his usual display on the pitch. Possibly that was because he was not wearing a football kit or tackling a pass. Instead, he was kitted in a formal suit and was in front of a microphone announcing his departure from the Barcelona football club after 20 years.
On the podium, the Argentinian was holding a little neatly folded tissue in his hand. It looked rather out of place but I thought nothing of it: men have a habit of scavenging tissues and then wringing them in their hands for multipurpose use – wipe the top of the table and the edge of their glass, or mop their sweat, or fiddle with it while making an argument.
“This is very difficult,” Messi said and then wiped a ghost runny nose with that tissue.
“I was not prepared for this,” he said as he dabbed at his [dry] eyes.
I peered closer to the screen. There were no tears and there was no runny nose, at least not before much eye scrunching.
He had wanted to leave the club last year, he said, but not this year. This year, he wanted to stay on and he wanted to end his career in Camp Nou with a ground of spectators giving him a final standing ovation. But it turns out that he couldn’t, because the club could not afford his salary of €1 million a week, hence, the tissue.
I suppose he could have stayed on for a bit less if he was so heartbroken but, well, that’s his choice. Somehow, though, his demeanour and his eagerness to snivel gave me flashbacks of another diminutive figure on a podium trying to squeeze out crocodile tears during a speech: a Maltese man not an Argentinian one and one who doesn’t work with balls but with crooks.
I am referring, of course, to Joseph Muscat. As it happens, this week I was following quite an interesting investigative story in The Shift News, involving Muscat, or to be more precise, his golden handshake.
A bit of context first. This golden handshake scheme was introduced in 2012 to help former ministers, opposition leaders and prime ministers who find themselves out of office. It’s a financial parting package aimed at helping them find their feet again. Similar schemes are in place in other EU countries and are, in essence, quite fair.
However, it’s not what you do but how you do it. And, in Malta, we go about it completely the wrong way round: it is a hidden scheme. And the main reason for this is that in Malta discussing the salaries of politicians is taboo.
Joseph Muscat’s talent lies only in deceit- Kristina Chetcuti
To the national psyche, politicians have to earn as little as possible. In fact, if you’re a mere back bencher, you’re stuck with €20,000 a year and with trying to juggle your constituency and another job. It’s a system which not only tempts corruption but facilitates it. We cannot seem to conceive the possibility that if MPs were to be more decently paid, our parliament would attract more competent people.
Unfortunately, the fact that our politicians are paid peanuts is why we get Edward Zammit Lewises elected to parliament and it’s why we get ministers who cringingly cling to the arms of wealthy businessmen, no matter if they face murder charges.
Therefore, while the Maltese ministerial golden handshake scheme is a good idea, at times it leads to prolific abuse. How so? Termination benefits, for example, are paid over and over. Also, these lump sums are given out even when an MP is made to resign because of wrongdoing, such as that Rosianne Cutajar.
Muscat, back in the day when he was opposition leader, had gone red in the face about “the honoraria scandal” and, yet, did he try to change the system when he got to power? No. Far from it; he exploited it and abused it right to the very last minute when he secretly tweaked the golden handshake rules so that he himself could pocket more.
The scheme allows former top government position holders to get a pay-off, the equivalent of one-twelfth of the annual salary upon their termination. The sum depends on their salary and on how long they would have been in parliament.
For some reason, Muscat’s golden handshake was not worked on the same mathematical formula and he pocketed €120,000 from our taxes, double the €60,000 amount he should have been entitled to.
No one knows why. It seems to have been calculated on the basis of a secret memo approved during Muscat’s cabinet meetings in 2018 and in 2019. Robert Abela, our current prime minister, knows about it because he was then Muscat’s personal legal adviser but refuses to explain the discrepancy. He thinks that journalists should not be asking for information about our public money.
Muscat’s reaction when asked about the sum was (yawn) to play his victim card: “I was treated like everybody else.”
Well, we may be ġaħans but we can all do the maths. And treated like everybody else he was not. Also, given his track record of a veritable ‘Joey fotti’ always supporting his crook mates, him scraping the barrel of public money would definitely not be a surprise.
Will this awake the police from their slumber and investigate the matter? Hello Commissioner Gafà? Not only did Muscat’s culture of impunity lead to the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, not only did he support his best mates Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri to hoodwink the nation to fill their pockets, not only did he ruin the island’s reputation and earned us a place on the FATF greylist but his parting shot was signing a secret agreement to give a generous parting gift to himself. Out of our money.
Truly, Muscat’s talent lies only in deceit.
twitter: @krischetcuti