The drama around Konrad Mizzi’s wife keeps us entertained through the summer. And this al fresco merriment is certainly not cheap. It is theatre in high places, tearful and tragic, yet teasing and comic at the same time. Good stuff for an open-air tragicomedy, on a Mediterranean island, in the heat.
The life and times of a minister’s wife. Love, power, hate, envy, knights, money, twists; themes to captivate an audience.
The prelude is powerful Joseph Muscat’s much-publicised trip to China, ostensibly to sign a groundbreaking agreement with the economic dragon. The emphasis is on ‘groundbreaking’; Muscat has to be described in big adjectives.
The MoU – or was it MoO as in ostensible – didn’t quite spell out what we’re going to export to China’s 1,300 million consumers. Reading the MoO can cure you of the worst insomnia, but the exciting facts of what we’re going to sell to the Chinese in China will certainly come, some day. In some other ‘groundbreaking’ MoD (... detail), one presumes.
Weren’t the journalists taken on this trip a tad too interested in Mizzi’s love’s salary? More exciting perhaps than the MoU. It made for an interesting Act 2.
Tears at the ready, Mizzi’s wife was all too eager to show them her payslip. Those vicious critics she has, how can they keep drumming it into people’s minds that she’s costing us €13,000 a month? They hate her because she’s Chinese. They’re full of envy because she’s so good. Barely €3,000, she says, as she bursts into tears before she can explain in detail.
Pity is all over the place as the audience breaks for tireless Muscat’s long, tiring trip from China.
Once in Malta, straight to Parliament. Rowdy and noisy as befits high Mediterranean theatre. Muscat – now a knight in shining armour to defend his pal Mizzi’s love – flaunting his MoU and hiding Mizzi’s love’s tear-sogged contract. That will only be laid on the table of the House after the Opposition’s questions. You see, this is theatre, not parliamentary propriety.
It’s €3,000, says the Prime Minister. A payslip is part of this mini- drama too. Let them stew; they won’t even bear looking at the contract when the play within a play wins the day.
But they do. And the odd journalist too. An unwanted twist in Muscat’s play. And the terms start coming out. Not the best part of the evening; money is the root of many a play but figures are too dry. Men poring over a contract do not usually high drama make. Still, her pay is €221,000 over three years. Gasps from the audience; that’s double what she and big Muscat say, and half taxed to boot. Those in the audience start linking the character to their own tax-paying life. Suddenly, the pity evaporates.
There is something Sai Mizzi has to pay for: linen and pillows
And more. Allowances aplenty, the children’s education, money for settling in, all kinds of care, outfits, air tickets. A fully-expensed house. How does that compare to Ambassador Clifford Borg-Marks’s terms? That’s not to be disclosed; you can’t have the audience asking what he does and he speaks Mandarin too, having been there for 30 years. They’ll believe he has done all the work and Mizzi’s wife is just a sidekick, all because she’s Muscat’s pal’s wife. Just don’t talk about the ambassador; orders from Muscat.
But some journalists are now working it all out: it is €13,000 a month. We’re close to the end of the drama but we’re only back where we started. It wasn’t scripted to be like this. We can hear Mizzi’s wife wailing in the wings. But this time there’s no pity from the audience; she’s been found out. Muscat and pal Mizzi try to wipe her tears away; they’re for real now. But wait, there is some tiny saving grace: she’s not going to save all her salary, there is something she has to pay for. Yes; linen and pillows. All sigh.
You choose the title. It’s the tragedy of the €13,000 or the comedy of pillows.