Among the things you probably don’t know about Joseph Muscat is that, when he was first posited as the new Labour leader, his party organised a national tour of dinner parties for him.
One such was at the home of an expat Brit in Gozo who was asked by an avid party supporter (but a friend, nonetheless) to host it.
The only stipulation was that the guests would be residents, which was odd in itself because expat residents, even taxpayers, don’t get to vote. And (full disclosure) I was not invited, or, rather, I was disinvited on grounds that I might ask questions to which Muscat had not yet learnt the answers.
So, my chum invited only native (but English-speaking) Gozitan friends. And this being a Laburista occasion, the 20 guests all spoke only in Maltese, throughout, thereby excluding their generous but unimpressed host from the entire evening’s conversation around his own dinner table. The following morning, he told me: “I don’t know what, if anything, they learnt from it. But I’d like to think that, by the end of the meal, Dr Muscat had at least learnt which cutlery to use with each course.”
Before that event, none of us (I mean, expats) was even aware of the fellow’s name. He was an MEP but nobody in Gozo was interested in the politics of the EU.
Basically, it was believed, Gozitans had voted for Malta to join Europe but not for Gozo to join.
Of course, they would accept the shedloads of money on offer. But any laws emanating from Brussels would be ignored (or ‘enforced’) in much the same way as those decreed nearer to home on Malta were.
So some roadworks were started with notices proclaiming that they were being built with the “support” of the EU, without saying that the support was actually 85 per cent of the total cost, or, as it was translated in Gozo, 100 per cent of the actual cost.
Joseph Muscat had gone from being the golden boy bemused by a fish-knife to somebody that nobody would invite for dinner
In other words, nobody took the EU seriously. It was where failed MPs were sent to enjoy a highly paid retirement. People like Alfred Sant.
Muscat, however, was coming in the opposite direction. Effectively out of nowhere.
Little did we know, therefore – nor could we have known – how much the boy from Burmarrad was going to change the face of Malta.
This fireworks-importer’s son flying in from Brussels to save us may not have learnt much about table manners during his time as an MEP but what he had learnt while on the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs was that a million euros was mere pocket money.
He had become used to handling matters on a financial scale that would have been unimaginable in his private life in Malta. He was working in an arena that involved decisions leading to vast capital gains and business profits involving literally billions of euros.
Within five years of becoming Labour’s leader, a fairly inevitable swing vote resulted in his being elected the country’s prime minister.
Like the legendary Dom Mintoff before him, he and his henchmen now had permissions and licences to sell, at a price they could fix. And the prices would be counted in millions. A Russian, Korean, Iranian or Chinese person could buy Maltese (and, thereby, EU) citizenship for his family starting at a single million (plus ‘due diligence’ and ‘administration’ costs). Or a stranger on a plane, with no experience of the health industry, could buy a set of hospitals for an outlay which included getting millions back to run them.
However, despite an open invitation to do so, no investigative reporter has been able to find evidence of Muscat stashing any of this cash on his own account, or in his own accounts. If the FBI, Interpol or even Europol has anything on him, they are all keeping uncharacteristically quiet about it.
Nevertheless, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project last year named Muscat ‘Man of the Year in Organised Crime and Corruption’ for “the increases in criminality and lack of prosecutions during his term”.
Unlike Mintoff, his name may soon be forgotten. However, his history of misgovernance, which resulted in Malta being greylisted, blacklisted and financially downgraded, will blight the country’s reputation for years to come.
By his mid-40s he was a busted flush. He had gone from being the golden boy bemused by a fish-knife to somebody that nobody would invite for dinner.