Rosianne Cutajar has been appointed to chair the parliamentary health committee. Yes, the same Rosianne Cutajar who was forced out of cabinet. And, yes, the parliamentary health committee. Read it again. It is just unbelievable. But it’s true. Despair if you must, for there is nothing left to do.
Labour’s contempt for the decent people of this country, indeed the decent people in their own party, is simply staggering. What could be more important than the nation’s health? But nothing is off limits for Labour.
Wrecking the health service by handing half of it to a crook who never ever managed as much as a village clinic was not enough. They are intent on destroying what is left of it by appointing as chairman of the parliamentary health committee not only a total incompetent but somebody whose behaviour reeks.
Labour makes a mockery of its own slogan of meritocracy. Cutajar is a teacher by profession. She has no shred of experience or expertise in the complex and fraught area of health. Her competence in the field is that of an absolute beginner. What utter irresponsibility and recklessness to appoint somebody completely out of her depth to chair the parliamentary health committee in the middle of a pandemic.
But it’s not just her sheer incompetence for the role that has irked even the most loyal Labour diehards. Cutajar was kicked out of the cabinet for good reason. She accepted thousands of euros from a man charged with money laundering and accused of complicity in the murder of a journalist.
She accepted from Yorgen Fenech tens of thousands of euros, which she claimed she passed on to her loyal friend, Charles Farrugia, it-Tikka. The commissioner for standards did not believe her. He was convinced Cutajar was lying to hide her shameful actions.
Cutajar not only betrayed the trust of her prime minister, her party and her constituents but she aggravated her position by concocting falsehoods to save her own skin.
Her failure to declare income from the rotten deals was referred for investigation by the tax commissioner. She failed to list the money she made in her declaration of assets. Her pathetic excuse was that she did not know she was meant to declare ‘gifts’.
Her own party had to remove her from the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe to shield her from a disciplinary hearing by the rules committee. She had stood up at the parliamentary assembly to protect the man who had showered her with thousands of euros on her birthday.
She vociferously opposed attempts by the parliamentary assembly to pass a resolution demanding an independent inquiry into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Cutajar, who had shamelessly bagged thousands of euros from the accused, for the first time ever stood up to speak at the Council of Europe, The possible effect of her speech was to obstruct justice and protect criminals.
Cutajar embarrassed the nation. She embarrassed her party, which was forced to intervene to protect her from the rules committee. She embarrassed her prime minister.
In any healthy democracy, Rosianne Cutajar would have long been stripped of the party whip and expelled from the party- Kevin Cassar
But she feels no remorse, mortification or discomfort. Her brash insolence was manifested by her brazen declaration that she would still contest the next election even before the prime minister had spoken.
Instead of showing contrition for the damage she caused her party and her nation, Cutajar lacked the insight to keep a low profile at least for a while. Rubbing salt into the nation’s wound, she devised a public relations disaster by handing out sweets to children at school and uploading photographs to social media. Private companies scrambled to protect their brand by disassociating themselves from Cutajar’s stunt.
Even the Labour-appointed Children’s Commissioner, Pauline Miceli was forced to condemn Cutajar, stating that Cutajar’s exploitation of children for her political campaigning made her “uncomfortable”, especially since Cutajar had not sought parents’ explicit written consent before uploading their children’s photos.
It wasn’t the first time that Cutajar had exploited others for her own purposes. She had been condemned for visiting Dar Pinto home for the elderly, distributing oranges and uploading photos of the residents onto her Facebook page.
If proof were needed of her poor judgement, she willingly provided it – in heaps. Time and time again, Cutajar showed crassness of the highest order. More worryingly, she revealed an utter failure to appreciate basic norms of decency. Her judgement is so entirely deficient, her appreciation of the negative impact of her own actions so poor, she should never be allowed to take on any responsibility. She is a danger not only to her party but to the entire nation.
But if her judgement is poor, that of her prime minister is even worse. And it never seems to get any better. Having burnt his fingers badly with his hard-headed insistence on re-appointing Justyne Caruana despite her manifest unfitness for office, Abela repeats his fatal flaw with Cutajar.
Abela indulges in cynical political calculations. It is not the interests of the nation that guide his decisions. It is the warped cold consideration of partisan interests that are at the forefront of his agenda. To hell with the nation’s health, to hell with meritocracy, to hell with decency when a few hundred extra votes are at stake.
Cutajar has repeatedly shown that she is not only untrustworthy, unbelievable and shamelessly arrogant but also dangerous.
Bestowing any position of responsibility or any hint of power on her is bound to lead to serious regret on those taking that gamble.
In any healthy democracy, Cutajar would have long been stripped of the party whip and expelled from the party. In a decent democracy, Cutajar would have been forced to give up her parliamentary seat. Instead, she is feted like a hero by a prime minister desperately clambering to outdo his predecessor – at any cost. Sadly, that cost is paid by the nation. And the currency of that cost is despair.