Prime Minister Robert Abela scoffed at his critics. “Stick to books and blogs,” he told us in this universe where books are a waste of time, “while we (his government) continue to lead”. While we stick to books and blogs, let us, just from the news of the past week, sum up where we’ve been led to.
Keith Schembri was in parliament this week. First, he denied ordering a Panama company to be set up for him. Confronted by the evidence, he then says he does not remember. But he does admit ordering the set-up of a New Zealand trust. Why is that ok?
Why does the second most powerful government official set up an offshore structure to siphon off money he has made here? And why is it that, six years after the inquiry into his (alleged) crimes started, he still walks free?
Edward Scicluna is the governor of the central bank. In open committee, in the presence of Labour MPs, Schembri accused the central bank governor of perjuring himself, lying about being left out of decisions such as the Electrogas power stations.
Scicluna went back to work the next day.
On his way to parliament, Abela met Jean Paul Sofia’s mother. She implored him for a public inquiry into her son’s death. It was like asking Robocop for a kidney. Looking up, all she could see was his chin. He repeated the mantra that a public inquiry would damage the criminal inquiry, even though, after the Daphne Caruana Galizia case, it has been established beyond doubt that that is not true.
While a prime minister distracts a mourning mother with misdirection, the crime scene where her son was killed is flattened with unseemly haste. It feels like yet another cover-up.
Speaking of cover-ups. The nearly invisible Victoria Buttigieg hid behind taller-body men and ran from journalists armed with questions. A spokesman for the justice minister told the frustrated reporters that if they had any questions, they needed to put them to the minister, not the attorney general.
While they raped the national airline to exhaustion, they gave up half of our national health service to outside control- Manuel Delia
That’s unconstitutional. The journalists did not have questions on policy or the administration of justice. They had questions about the attorney general’s decision not to prosecute two people indicated by a magistrate as suspects in the crimes committed at Pilatus Bank. The attorney general alone decides on whether to prosecute and no minister is her boss. Only she can answer but, instead, she runs.
Meanwhile, Alfred Zammit, who overruled his predecessor’s findings into Pilatus Bank in 2016 and gave Ali Sadr a certificate of compliance, is back at the helm of the FIAU. He’s like a persistent stain.
Nurses are no longer the heroes of the land. The government now accuses them of greed. Meanwhile, teachers, who have just found out nurses are already better paid than they are, wonder why they are so compliant.
The fates of neither can be compared to the poor sods who deliver food on motorbikes. The national minimum wage here applies only to white people.
Developers continue to insist we are in desperate need for taller towers, fatter hotels, drier urban sprawls in what is left of the country. While we breathe their dust, they take weekly flights to their Tuscan villas to enjoy the open space. Abela doesn’t go quite as far. He can’t wait for his weekend boat trips to Ragusa.
Meanwhile, developers slander activists who fight for what is left of the environment. And one of them solves a legal problem by blocking a point of access with a ton of concrete.
The police say they cannot interfere. They know that bullying is 99 per cent of the law. In contrast, when four bright students point out to a website that its security systems fall foul of the law, they are arrested, and strip searched in scenes out of Argentina circa 1985.
The economy minister, Silvio Schembri, is exposed for using offices given to him by major players of one very specific economic sector. No points if you guessed construction.
He says he’s going to produce rental agreements to prove everything is kosher. But he needs the time to find them. It’s like he found his predecessor’s playbook. Former economy minister Chris Cardona lived at the pleasure of the Fenech family, until he produced a rental agreement.
Air Malta is crashing despite Panglossian promises by Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi. The expense to the country to honour the promises they made would cover a raise for nurses and maybe one for teachers too. It’s true Muscat and Mizzi are not in politics anymore but the people who foisted them on us are the party in government. Will no one hold them to account?
They’re not worried. They’re serene. Just like Rosianne Cutajar.
While they raped the national airline to exhaustion, they gave up half of our national health service to outside control. An American conglomerate is now using its patients as human shields, hostages, while it negotiates the most favourable exit for itself.
You won’t find any of these stories on the national TV station, TVM. They cover an idyllic country where the government is always right. I thought I wanted to go to TVM country on holiday until I found that Nazis are respected figures there.
Perhaps Abela is right. While he leads, we’re better off sticking to books and blogs.