No, this is not a Comedy Knights script although it could be.
Sketch 1: The prime minister, in a rare candid moment, admits that the streets of Valletta are no longer safe for his child. Within hours, there’s panic in the Castille PR media division. The Bobby team of persons of trust are on the phone ordering Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà to attend a damage control press conference with his political masters where we are fed the comforting misinformation that crime is on the decline by five per cent.
Sketch 2: The Building and Construction Authority has been repeatedly reported by PBS and Super One to be getting stronger dealing with cowboy builders. Meanwhile, a demolition job in Birkirkara sends tons of blocks of falling stone on to the tarmac of an open street. By the grace of God, no car or person was passing at the time. The Chamber of Architects describes the demolition works as “completely outrageous”.
Lo and behold, the site’s architect is none other than the BCA’s own chairperson (who has since resigned), whose private clients include two of the islands’ major construction oligarchs, namely the resident goalkeeper of the Malta Developers Association, and on the left side of the pitch, the multi-millionaire wannabee Maradona, who also bought himself a premier football team to play with.
Sketch 3: Over three years ago, we saw the farewell tour of Joseph and Michelle Muscat. Later we found out we gave them an “undocumented” golden handshake of €120,000. A few days later, we discovered that Robert Abela gave them government offices rent free so that Joseph Muscat could work on his Accutor type of private consultancies. We thought we knew it all.
But now we find out that the charity queen swimmer has had the free use of a government luxury Range Rover Discovery vehicle which is maintained and repaired at public cost. For Lydia Abela and all of us mortals, it’s only a free Tal-Linja card. Patience Lydia. Your time will come.
Sketch 4: A Labour minister resigns in disgrace. She is given a consultancy salary. After some months, she is forgiven by the great leader and reappointed to cabinet.
A Labour minister resigns in disgrace. She is given a consultancy salary. After some months, she is forgiven by the great leader and reappointed to cabinet- Eddie Aquilina
Within weeks she’s caught again, this time handing out a fake consultancy payment to her foreign love interest. She is finally forced to bid farewell to her friends in politics and it looked like she was going to have to work like the rest of us. No way José.
Within months, she is given no less than three government part-time consultancy contracts, one of them as a person of trust, yes, of trust, in the same ministry she once led. The Labour establishment does excel in one thing – in protecting its own from the pitfall of a normal hard-working honest life.
They are the analogy of a five-year-old offspring who still refuses solid food, preferring instead the warm milk from the maternal tit.
Sketch 5: Then comes the saga of the heritage milestone that keeps on disappearing. Following its initial accidental discovery in a minister’s villa garden, and a subsequent very serious police investigation, the precious object disappears for a second time. It might now have been quietly returned to its rightful place, but no one in authority, least of all the minister himself, wants to talk about it.
Sketch 6: Energy Minister Miriam Dalli boasts that the present national grid demand stands just over 500 megawatts, and that we have a full capacity, weather permitting, that can handle demand up to 750 megawatts. She taunts her critics with a “where would we be without Labour and the LNG tanker?”
The BWSC power station that former energy minister Konrad Mizzi sold to the Chinese makes an operating profit of €10 million despite not operating most of the time, while the public entity Enemalta makes a loss of €35 million buying overpriced units from the other private profit-making Electrogas plant. The only honest “only-pay-for-what-you-get” electricity supply comes from the interconnector, owned by the public and which provides us with the cheapest rates.
Sketch 7: The “real deal” Steward Health Care International (SCHI) sometime in 2018 took over the fabulous Vitals top management along with its contractual rights of receiving around €80 million annually for “managing” three hospitals. St Luke’s Hospital is now a forgotten wasteland but we still don’t know who is behind SCHI.
As soon as a Malta Today journalist starts investigating its hidden ownership structure, SCHI complains to Castille demanding an investigation into the journalist’s investigation.
If SCHI loses their contract for non-performance on their part, the faceless people behind it will get a €100 million goodbye darling cheque from us. The real laugh is that we don’t even get to know who they actually are.
And you think it cannot be any funnier than this. Rest assured Labour will always prove it can make it so.