It is now three months since Robert Abela became prime minister. His first public appearances were a refreshing change from the arrogant attitude of his delinquent predecessor, Joseph Muscat.
Initially, two features struck me in particular: a modest soft spoken tone that contrasted sharply with the haughty high-sounding rhetoric of the self-praising egomaniac preceding him and a natural smile which came as a relief after seven years of digesting Muscat’s spiteful smirk.
Three months down the line and my initial impressions have been totally quashed. As from day one, Abela has shown that he is not his own man and is proving to be just the pleasant face of a ‘patt imxajtan’ (a devil’s pact) with three issues that have completely dictated the prime minister’s agenda: Muscat/Keith Schembri; the developers; and the hunters.
Let us start first with the first duo.
Just seven days after his swearing-in on January 13, he allowed Schembri – the author of so many illegalities and shady deals – to leave Malta for Tunis (next stop, Dubai?). Barely eight days later, on January 28, Abela let Schembri travel again to London, only to be followed a day later by our defrocked Emperor Joseph.
Was it just an innocent ‘fish and chips’ reunion in the financial capital of the world?
The story repeated itself a few weeks later, on March 8, when Abela allowed Joseph to fly to Miami (Panama, next stop?). On March 12, a few hours after Joseph landed back at MIA, the prime minister declared compulsory quarantine for people returning from abroad. Lucky Joseph... he missed it by a few hours.
And this allowed him to pack a suitcase and to leave again, less than 24 hours later, again for London. While Abela was desperately warning us Maltese not to travel, he allowed his beloved MP to go to London.
A few minutes after Joseph Muscat landed back at Gudja airport, Robert Abela declared the closure of the airport
Then, a few minutes after Muscat landed back at Gudja airport on March 16 late at night, Abela declared the closure of the airport for the following Friday. Now that the champagne Socialist comrade Muscat had landed this could be done.
The fact that we imported an extra 30 per cent of coronavirus into Malta by keeping the airport open for 10 days more was immaterial. Invictus had to come first.
Muscat and Keith are not the only people privileged by Abela. Indeed, barely 11 days after his swearing-in, one of the first lobbies he met was Sandro Chetcuti’s fourth floor Malta Developers’ Association.
Here, Abela solemnly declared that the building sector would not be held back...despite the regular collapsing of whole edifices.
Following Miriam Pace’s killing and in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, Abela again met the MDA on March 29 and had the nerve to state that the building industry is fundamental in the rebuilding of post-corona Malta. Abela’s wish is most questionable at present as nobody knows how the economy is going to behave.
In order to allow his favoured ones to get on with their business, Abela went as far as to undermine his own health experts, Public HealthSuperintendent Charmaine Gauci and Health Minister Chris Fearne.
On March 27, he rubbished their serious measure of lockdown for 65+ and other vulnerable persons. He wasted 12 minutes of prime time on TVM to humiliate them by insisting that “lockdown is not a lockdown”. He basically encouraged the people to do the exact opposite.
Not content with doing this once, on April 5 he once again totally contradicted what Gauci had been insisting upon. “Go out, no problem going out. Just do not stay in groups,” he told us.
And ‘boy, oh boy’, did Abela’s favoured ones take advantage of us 120,000 being locked in! In fact, the building industry continued with its incessant excavations, driving residents mad; from March 31 Transport Minister Ian Borg’s henchman at Infrastructure Malta ordered the butchering of the trees in Attard. Then, on April 5, behind his cabinet’s back, the prime minister gave the go-ahead for the opening of the hunting season.
On April 10, he went even further. He warned us that unless we wanted harsher measures taken against us, we people should stay indoors in the coming days. But, of course, hunters were still allowed to continue with their ‘delizju’. For Robert, they do not form part of us plebs.
Robert Abela: 12 weeks to put into practice your ‘patt imxajtan’ are more than enough. You have proven to be a big failure with your 100 days of disappointments and disgust.
Time for you to make way for a real prime minister, one who knows how to put the people’s real interests before votes.
Arnold Cassola, Former secretary-general of the European Green Party