The question on many people’s mind last week was: why on earth would a Danish man come all the way to Malta to fondle models? The answer is quite simple really. Malta is exactly the place to go if you want to grope someone. We have the exact forma mentis for that, which explains why we are stuck with a Labour government.
This country is being groped every day but, unlike the Dane hauled before the courts last week, we cannot accuse our government of indecently assaulting the island. It is legitimate and consensual. Democracy has its drawbacks, sometimes.
A 24-year-old Dane, posing as a doctor, came to Malta looking for models to pose for a Lifeguard Academy website. He proceeded to personally administer the kiss of life to his models, which is all game in liberal Malta, except that it took place at Mater Dei Hospital.
Twice in a row this man walked inside our national hospital with a troupe of models in trail, found an empty room with an ECG machine in it and proceeded to carry out a medical examination that came complete with a medical certificate.
Health Parliamentary Secretary Chris Fearne has called an inquiry. He had to do that, of course, because the other more honourable alternative would have been to resign.
Fearne may have taken his eye off the ball last week after PN health spokeswoman Claudette Buttigieg brought to light the case of an elderly lady who died in a corridor of a hospital where anyone can walk in and claim an examination room for his personal use.
Replying to Buttigieg’s accusations, some hospital big shots assured that the old lady who died in one of their corridors had all the medical equipment available and everything had been done to save her. Nobody doubts that because there are heroes working inside that hospital.
But she still died in a corridor.
Taking a personal interest, Fearne found time to meet the relatives of the corridor lady.
We do not know who these people are because they refuse to reveal their identity. But, according to a statement issued by the Department of Information (not their lawyer as it should have been), these relatives “have expressed the wish to put people’s minds at rest that, at Mater Dei Hospital, there is all the necessary equipment to save people’s lives”.
And they added: the lady’s death has been incorrectly reported “without their consent” and used as a “political football”. It probably escapes them that, in allowing the government’s information service to quote them in such a partisan way, they have volunteered to serve as exactly that proverbial ball.
These shameful political stunts by Fearne and his Labour ilk smack of China-style public confessions except that, in this case, faceless people are being paraded to accuse others, and not to confess.
Bringing Labour to government was a leap into the dark unknown
There is much that is wrong with this sort of government spin.
Firstly, the death of a woman in a government hospital corridor is not a private matter and does not require anyone’s consent to be made public. We pay taxes for our hospital service.
Secondly, the pathetic defence put up by the hospital authorities, claiming that in a corridor the patient received the same treatment as in a ward, only without comforts like TV, was offensive at best. That woman died in a corridor: it wasn’t a TV set she needed but dignity.
Thirdly, it is not up to those faceless relatives to assure people and “put their mind at rest” that the hospital has all the necessary equipment. That is something only the hospital authorities can say and, given last week’s events, neither they nor Fearne can assure that. They can’t even promise that patients will be attended to by a real doctor.
Fearne should stop trying to play the clever one with the health sector. These stunts worked before the election, like when his party leader linked the tragedy of a family plagued with lung cancer and asthma to the Delimara power plant.
We can suppose that Joseph Muscat got their vote in return for his compassion but he kept the power station too.
It was easy to play to the gallery before the election but reality is fast catching up and cleverness is not enough in governance. No wonder Muscat’s approval ratings among people with a university level of education is so low.
We saw the stark reality of that last week when former prime minister Lawrence Gonzi appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. It was a gruelling experience for the Labour members on the PAC, Owen Bonnici and his fellow ministers Edward Zammit Lewis and Justyne Caruana. The great divide between them and the former prime minister showed what this country lost in replacing Gonzi by a Labour salesman.
Significantly, Gonzi referred to the three Labour committee members as ministers, while they kept referring to him as “the witness”, except for when Bonnici appeared to accidentally refer to him as prime minister.
Gonzi: “I did not meet the tenderer. Others do that, I do not.”
Bonnici (thinking he was going in for the kill “Who went to meet tenderers Prime Minister?”
Gonzi: “Recently, there was a minister who went to meet a tenderer in Spain.”
A clearly flustered Bonnici shot back in typical Labour style, saying he was prepared to debate with Gonzi as much as he liked and whenever he wanted.
But Gonzi coolly said: “You asked me and I replied.”
The former prime minister’s reference to Transport Minister Joe Mizzi’s trip to Spain, delivered like a coup de grâce, brought home the shocking fact of what incomptence has replaced the government he once ran.
At the PAC meeting, for much of the time, Gonzi found himself lecturing the three members of the new government we are stuck with.
Yes, Gonzi’s legacy does include Arriva but what will Mizzi’s legacy be? We can only look ahead with dread as we are regaled with fascinating outbursts from this energetic minister from Kalkara.
Mizzi will not give a target date for when the new Parliament project will be completed because he “does not trust contractors”. Funny he should say that because people put their trust in his government to complete that project but that may be too much of a fine point for this honourable minister to notice.
Meanwhile, a new company has taken over the public transport system. Mizzi last week was still to table in the House of Representatives a copy of the agreement he reached with the Spanish company.
Maybe he intends to table the document in the new Parliament, when it finally gets a table. He really has no hurry because the company is in no hurry either.
Autobuses de Leon made a soft launch earlier this month, so soft that no one noticed. No one that is, except Mizzi himself who said that although “not much had changed” complaints on public transport had dropped by 90 per cent since the company took over. Mizzi thinks it is a change in public perception that has led to the drop in complaints.
Now where have we heard that word before – perception?
Bringing Labour to government was a leap into the dark unknown.
Now we are all stuck on the same crowded bus, holding on to anything solid like our lives depended on it.
There was never a Labour road map, only a grope map.
Labour’s taken over the steering wheel and the country is being driven fast ahead as it gets plundered by people who have long waited in the wings for their chance to make a grab.
As for the passengers, huddled up in the dark, the likely feeling they will get when they finally reach their unknown destination is that they’ve just been groped, by Labour.