How ironic! According to the latest report, Malta’s swine livestock has registered a sharp decline, yet an increasing number of locals are behaving (rather) like pigs with their noses in the public trough.

The idiom ‘to pig out’ depicts not only overindulgence in food but also underlines a level of compulsiveness towards greed and self-gratification. In crude terms, the more one has, the more one wants. Nothing is satiating.

“They eat to vomit and they vomit what they eat,” remarked Seneca, a Roman philosopher. Although Seneca was referring to his contemporaries, well known to self-induce puking to be able to gobble more, his statement clearly depicts a person who pigs out.

Recently, a Labour parliamentarian, in her quest to secure her third income, eyed the role of a ‘consultant’ to the ITS CEO (who, ironically, occupies a similar role in another state entity concurrently).

She justified her decision by stating that ‘everyone pigs out’. Unintentionally, she disclosed what many knew and have witnessed during these last 10 years of the Labour administration.

Interesting to note, she used the term ‘everyone’ rather than ‘a number of’. She was clearly categorical. By her own admission, was she implicating all her colleagues? Was she implying that even our prime minister pigs out?

Whatever she meant, she has surely coined a definition for 10 years of Labour.

Although the list of Labour exponents who are gorging themselves is too long to compile, one can categorise them into two levels: those guzzling on a micro level and others on a macro level. 

On the micro level, there are those who enjoy lucrative direct orders, are employed in phantom jobs with astronomical salaries, hold positions of trust or are fats cats enjoying hay while the sun shines. They do not hide their piggishness. On the contrary, they brag about it in our faces, knowing they are protected.

Those on the macro level, however, tend to be the slyer crooks. It’s a case of some pigs being greedier than others. From the Panama papers revelations to the Electrogas debacle, from 17 Black revelations to the wind farms in Montenegro, from Marsa’s shady flyover contract to the monumental fraud of the Vitals/Stewards hospitals, these Labour protagonists had – and some still have – their noses immersed in the public trough. All government projects show fingerprints of sleaze.

“Everyone pigs out” – how right she was.

Regrettably, our prime minister not only had the gall to defend the indefensible but had the audacity to crow over his socialist credentials. Come again?

Labour now resembles a sleek den of thieves, fraudsters, opportunists and fat cats relishing their lavish jet set lifestyles- Albert Buttigieg

The Labour Party ceased to be socialist a long time ago. After spending 23 years in the political wilderness, Joseph Muscat, in his attempt to implement his infamous ‘road map’, sold off the PL’s soul.

It was a Faustian pact. 

Today, Labour is anything but labour. It has lost the moral credibility to represent the voice of the left. All the good done during these years in office has been overshadowed by systemic sleaze. Labour now resembles a sleek den of thieves, fraudsters, opportunists and fat cats relishing their lavish jet set lifestyles. 

On the contrary, an ever-increasing number of citizens are struggling to make ends meet. According to the latest statistics, 103,329 of our citizens are at risk of poverty and social exclusion.

I am not alone in lambasting Labour as champagne socialists. 

Not only are a number of Labour stalwarts appalled but 441 left-leaning sympathisers have also petitioned the Labour cabinet requesting the Labour government to investigate all shady major dealings and contracts and their enablers.

They are not alone.

The Nationalist Party and civil society too are asking the Labour government to come clean and avoid another “spiral of reputational damage” for the country.

Government apologists, in an attempt to avoid dealing with the present sleaze, will now point to past blunders. Although what was wrong then is still wrong now, never has the sleaze reached such an irreversible extent and so systematically.

Under the Labour administration, skulduggery has become the modus operandi in which Labour exponents feel entitled to pig out.

“I’ve had enough,” she lamented to the alleged murderer.

True. Honest Malta has had more than enough of Labour’s piggishness.

Albert Buttigieg is a Nationalist member of parliament and spokesperson for a better standard of living.