The migrant tragedy was a welcome distraction for the government last week. It emerged quite bruised from local elections that showed how exposed its underbelly is – in the Labour hardcore south.
The only saving grace was that wild card, bird-shooting Gozo, with its minister Anton Refalo who suddenly emerged out of the woodworks, thinking it is now safe to return to the public realm.
He should know it is never safe forpeople like him in a democracy, because people with an IQ higher than the average Gozitan goat have a tendency to remember things, like for example the properties he has in Malta and Gozo, and the €830,371 bank loan that must be quite a feat to service, given his declared income.
Refalo, it must be recalled, successfully contested the elections for the first time in 1987, which makes him the product of Labour’s Golden Years. He must have been so impressed by Premier Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s performance in government that he could not wait to join. Now, decades later, Gozo’s stuck with Refalo, a dinosaur of old Labour.
The government’s Department of Information website describes Refalo as someone who is a patron of the arts and an avid collector to boot. Evidently his passion for antiques transcends politics because some years ago he bought former Nationalist Prime Minister George Borg Olivier’s personal desk for a stunning €25,000. That was probably before he got that bank loan.
More recently, Refalo described himself as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ (Manuel Mallia knows how that feels).
That was because one evening he called back a Gozo Channel ferry boat that had left him waiting on a quay. The details are, as is usual with Gozo, a bit blurred. Refalo may have called a canvasser who in turn called the Gozo Channel duty manager who, out of the kindness of his own heart and certainly not because of pressure exerted, told the ferry ship to turn back.
Refalo said he did nothing wrong that day in the same way that he now claims there is nothing wrong about the fact that he got to know of allegations of abuses at the Gozo Ministry last November but did not report the matter to the police. Instead, he referred the matter to the “civil service structures that dealt with potential whistleblowers”. What on earth is that, a government in-house cosa nostra?
The issue concerns allegations that the husband of former Nationalist Gozo minister Giovanna Debono used public funds for construction works in private residences.
Refalo got to know of the alleged abuses from someone complaining that his ministry had not paid him for the works done on private property. PN general secretary Chris Said received similar complaints and sadly did not handle the matter much better; but he is not in government, while Refalo is. Labour likes to make us forget that.
The whistleblower in-house structure does not appear to have done much about the serious allegations. The police only swooped in on the Gozo Ministry after the story was leaked to the media months later, right in the middle of the local election campaign, as Labour was targeting Gozo to compensate for the inevitable haemorrhage in the south.
The leak was pure coincidence of course. Muscat apparently did not know of the Gozo scandal, but boy, did he exploit it. He may be a bad Prime Minister, but he’s good at it. Meanwhile, Refalo made his disappearing act.
The PN media did not take the attack on the Debonos lying down and came up with its own list of cases of similar abuses in Gozo, this time under Refalo’s watch. They spoke of government workers employed in private properties in Kerċem, Għajnsielem, Għasri and Marsalforn.
Muscat may be a bad Prime Minister, but he’s good at it
Speaking to this newspaper, the Minister for Gozo denied everything and said anyone with information should go to the police. Funny how he didn’t suggest they use the whistleblower structures. Is it because if they went to the police they would not enjoy the same immunity as his informer?
Most uncannily, it was Labour’s deputy leader, Toni Abela, who came out in the minister’s defence.
Refalo was unable to face the press himself, or maybe he could not be trusted by his party not to bungle it if he did. Eloquence is not his best asset.
Abela had no business in the matter, because this is a government affair. It is shameful that he does not make a difference between government and party, because he obviously knows better. But that’s his cross to bear, and to his shame.
Labour’s deputy leader told a press conference that Refalo had nothing to answer for, oblivious to the fact that, if that were so, Refalo would have been sitting next to him when he made such an incredible statement.
Thinking he was speaking in a court of law, Abela went on to say that whereas the allegations against Refalo were just that, allegations, those against the husband of a former PN minister were ‘facts’.
Has Abela recently been secretly appointed judge like his former partner-in-chief at Alternattiva Demokratika, Wenzu Mintoff, because that is what he is beginning to sound like.
Abela was once an admirable man who stood up to the likes of Lorry Sant. Did he have to stoop so low to meet Labour’s standards?
It is clear that for all the moral talk of Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, the Whistleblower Act was never intended as anything else but to protect, and exploit, anyone willing to come forward and smear those cruel, insensitive and corrupt Nationalists, at the most opportune moment – election campaigns.
Meanwhile, Refalo stumbles on. He thinks he’s back in business – well, not so fast.
Last week he was happily inaugurating a rainbow coloured (zebra) crossing at Victoria, together with Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli. Apparently the event was to mark the first anniversary of the civil unions act.
The official DOI press release described the event as a ‘press conference’. Maybe some details were left out but the photographs only show primary school children listening to Dalli as she rambled on civil unions, which is effectively gay marriage with adoption rights. This is obscene.
Writing in this paper, moral theology lecturer Fr Richard-Nazzareno Farrugia compared the press-ganging of school children at such an event to an LGBTI pride parade. He asked: did the parents of those children, who have a right to decide on their religious and moral education, know that that day their children were being paraded over the gay rainbow?
This is not an issue of gay rights but a matter of parents’ rights to choose what is best for their children. It may come as a surprise to Minister Dalli, but there is much more to human rights than her so-called gay ‘rights’, even though she might owe her seat in power to them.
Parents do not send their children to school to listen to a liberal ideology that undermines the concept of family, of sexual identity and of the very fabric of society.
It is no use chasing the Gozo Minister for a reply on this offensive stunt. He would certainly scurry away into hiding until the storm is over. That’s his way of handling things.
Maybe Minister Dalli would bother to explain what exactly she told those children and if she had the consent of their parents. Did she talk to them at all about our international environmental responsibilities (like not shooting at migrating birds) and of the plight of the immigrant people her own government wanted to push back not so very long ago?
This ‘equal rights’ minister did not resign when her puppet master came up with the idea of push-backs. Maybe she should consider resigning now.