Labour’s soft spot for the regeneration of the former red light district in Strait Street says it all.Labour’s soft spot for the regeneration of the former red light district in Strait Street says it all.

And there you have it: Labour at its crass worst. If there is one area that Labour should not be trusted with, that’s our culture and heritage. That party just doesn’t have what it takes and much of what it does ends up as a national embarrassment.

Labour’s best cultural effort was the 1980s Wardakanta song festival, a cringe event that made you want to hide under the sofa each time some shrieking prima donna donning a red rose came on the telly.

Those golden Labour years also brought us an open-air disco at Fort St Angelo and dancers on top of Ħagar Qim Temples to the tunes of that offensive musical Ġensna.

A more recent and equally stunning contribution to Maltese culture was made soon after Labour returned to office in 2013. Then culture parliamentary secretary Jose Herrera had spoken about plans for three carnivals a year – funny how everyone thought the idea splendid and truly befitting the country.

The relocation of the Valletta monti to Ordnance Street, right in between the iconic Renzo Piano landmark and Pjazza Teatru Rjal, strips Joseph Muscat’s Labour to its bare, crude essentials. This is Muscat’s full monty because it exposes him for what he is: votes at any cost, even if it means degrading the capital city more than his predecessor Dom Mintoff did when he built social housing on top of City Gate.

Labour promised monti hawkers a prime site in the city before the election in return for their vote. The suspicion has long been that hawkers would be selling their wares right alongside the new parliament.

People duped into voting for Muscat had hoped that Labour would not stoop so low, but Labour never fails to disappoint.

Transport Minister Joe Mizzi was in Ordnance Street recently to tell us that the paving works there were complete and ready to welcome the monti hawkers. Standing next to Mizzi that day was Valletta Rehabilitation Project chairman Kenneth Zammit Tabona.

Zammit Tabona was last spotted next to the President happily wearing a fluffy shirt at a Baroque festival, so he may be excused for missing the slight detail that the monti would spill over right across Republic Street to underneath Piano’s parliament. Strange that Mizzi didn’t find a moment to tell him that.

Zammit Tabona was on national radio to tell us that he does not agree with the proposed location and stall designs because, among other things, the Maltese cross is the wrong colour. Oh gosh, what shame, dear Kenneth, just to think that all this happened under your nose.

The Valletta rehabilitation chairman thinks that the monti adds colour to Valletta and believes that it should go “up-market” to cater for the cultured, high-quality tourists that were recently in Malta for some baroque festival he keeps getting excited about. True, the monti could do with some suggestions of high street brand names for its laced knickers, even if they must come from switchers.

Muscat is managing to disassociate himself from his own government’s failures

Realising the public outrage at those ridiculous market stalls, the Prime Minister moved quickly to disassociate himself from the design, but not from their new location alongside the best architectural artwork to hit this island in a century. According to Muscat, the monti in its new place “would instil new life in the city”.

Translating such rubbish into real speak, what he means is that he made a promise he cannot break, because his populist premiership owes its electoral success to the likes of the monti hawkers, white taxi drivers, Armier boathouse owners, hunters, land speculators and other pockets with vested interests that go against the national interest he is meant to protect. This is not the first time that Muscat has not stood by his own people.

Inversely, it is becoming a trend for his way of government, as his motley Cabinet and their political appointees repeatedly fail to deliver. As minister after minister stumbles, out steps Muscat, playing the superhero, at his own ministers’ expense, who get publicly humiliated.

Muscat’s most recent victim was Social Solidarity Minister Michael Farrugia over the transfer of a competent man from the child fostering section. This time around it was the turn of Small Businesses Minister Chris Cardona to eat humble pie. Having publicly taken the cue from his scolding master, Cardona said that designers and architects would be consulted on more aesthetically pleasing stalls.

“If it is physically possible to place all the stalls in Ordnance Street I will do so to avoid any stalls spreading out... I’m already working on this,” he said. Cardona conceded it was a process that involved negotiations with every single hawker. What he really meant was negotiating with every single voter.

It is unclear how long Muscat can play these games because it is the people he has appointed that keep letting the country down.

Muscat tries to give the impression that he knows better than his blundering ministers. He does not. He governs by default, exploiting his colleagues’ failures, so he can outshine them. This is the behaviour of a schoolyard bully and opinion polls show that this disgraceful strategy works. Muscat is managing to disassociate himself from his very own government’s failures.

There was another fall guy in the monti move to Ordnance Street – William Lewis, a man commissioned to handle the Valletta market on the basis of his immense talent and capabilities, and not because he is a Labour official.

Architect Lewis was bragging on national television about the 75 new market stalls. Oblivious to the shocking bad taste of the stalls and the insensitivity of their location, Lewis’s main concern that day appeared to be how to accommodate an additional 50 other hawkers inside Valletta on Sundays.

Evidently, hawkers who are at present putting up stands at Horns Ditch in Floriana on Sundays have also been promised a share of the city spoils in return for their votes. It’s Cardona’s job to find them a place, and there aren’t many options.

It is no consolation that Valletta 2018 chairman and Labour stalwart Jason Micallef is against the relocation of the monti as proposed. He’s not much better.

Only last week, Micallef announced that Strait Street in Valletta, a former brothel zone currently undergoing so-called regeneration, is to have its own ‘artistic director’. Now everyone tacitly accepts that jobs for the boys is a price to be paid when a new administration comes in, but can Labour just stop inventing new posts that only serve to strain the country’s coffers?

The regeneration of a prime site like Strait Street is a purely commercial affair. The last thing the market needs is some government appointee to meddle with what the free market can easily handle on its own. But that is socialism for you, institutionalised cronyism. That is why we do not need Labour.

Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil said that a PN government would not allow the monti to set up in Ordnance Street or anywhere near the Piano project. Good start but not enough.

Writing in The Malta Independent last week, Nationalist spokesman on culture Joe Cassar appeared to extend his party’s hand in making ‘Valletta Capital of Culture 2018’ a success. He shouldn’t be doing that without preconditions. Labour cannot be trusted.

The relocation of the Valletta monti reflects the degenerate thinking that pervades the present administration. No self-respecting person, politician, party or organisation would want to be associated with such an unfolding national calamity called Labour.

Labour’s soft spot for the regeneration of the former red light district in Strait Street says it all.

While loose ladies once sold their wares for money in that narrow street, Labour keeps selling its soul for votes and the power that comes with it.

The Ordance Street monti saga and the pre-electoral promises made has left Labour shamefully exposed.

Now it really is the full monty.

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