I remember, as a young slip of a lad, not being overly impressed by The Three Stooges. It was probably a cultural thing, don’t you know, my being of an Anglo-Saxon bent when it comes to humour, rather like our dearly beloved Premier Joseph Muscat.
I’m as unimpressed by the pastiche on The Three Stooges that a trio of our honourable ministers of state put on last Wednesday when they duly pitched up to gainsay the Opposition about the siting of the American ‘University’ of Greater Żejtun or whatever it is that the project is to be called, when someone finally figures out who is really behind it and what it is going to achieve in our quest to turn the country into a centre of academic excellence.
Because, don’t you know (that phrase seems to be stuck in what passes for my mind) Labour in all its manifestations has always been about turning the country into a centre of academic excellence.
As in when they, with Dom Mintoff at the helm, destroyed the Medical School and rent the Royal University asunder into two rumps with precious little to call an academic reputation.
And as in when they, with Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici at the helm, waged war on private education.
Ministers Evarist Bartolo, Chris Cardona and Leo Brincat, responsible for education, commerce and the environment in that order, were trundled out in order to reassure us, the great unwashed, that this was an educational project whose astoundingly attractive commercial aspects would not harm the environment.
About the only accurate bit about that trio of reassurances was that the project was astoundingly attractive from a commercial point of view: we have no clue as to the value of the educational side of things (quite the contrary, in fact) and the environment is going to be about as protected, Brincat’s towering intellect and presence notwithstanding, as the tweety-birds are by his Cabinet colleague Roderick Galdes.
Emotive phrases such as “land grab” and “degrees for sale” (to go with our passports, one would assume) are flying around as I write and, given the way this bunch of incompetents, if not worse, go about things, I’m not exactly sanguine about the safety of the academic reputations of the university and the Mcast.
If the word gets around that degrees from Malta are dime a dozen, they’re going to be tarred with the same brush and no mistake.
And if anyone is offended by the use of the word “incompetents”, just consider for a moment and only as an example the way the law enabling gender identity change was botched up: they’re going to have to amend it already. Oh well, as long as we climb up meaningless league tables, I suppose that’s alright.
Can you imagine, even for a moment, if a Nationalist government had pulled even one tiny-weeny stroke of the type this bunch pull regularly?
You’d have had the PN’s turncoats spitting blood and baying for this minister’s head and that minister’s neck and you’d have had assorted specimens from the media and the tree-hugging sorority screeching Blue Murder and wearing out megaphone after megaphone.
We have no clue as to the value of the educational side of things
Not to put too fine a point on it, Lawrence Gonzi would have been taken out and shot on Castille Square, hopefully only virtually, and his ministers would have ended up doing a Mussolini, hanging by their figurative heels in front of the Palace.
While imagining that, imagine at the same time what would have happened, how Chicken Licken would have run about screaming that the sky was falling, the sky was falling, had the various vicissitudes currently befalling John Dalli befallen him when he was still a Nationalist.
As it is, one has to surmise that Premier Muscat is about to cut the umbilical cord connecting him to Dalli because even the enormous volume of aid and succour to the ‘enemy’ that Dalli had given him in his quest to become Premier Muscat is surely not enough to continue insulating Dalli forever.
Leaving aside that Dalli seems to be oblivious to the fundamental maxim about forbearing from digging when in a hole (and can his hole get any deeper?) what is it going to take for someone in officialdom to sit down and investigate?
I suppose it’s only natural for caution to be exercised, given Dalli’s penchant for using the police to get people to shut up about him but, again, seriously?
Again not to put too fine a point on it, the popular perception is that Dalli is bullet-proof because he was such a fine, upstanding example of people with an agenda suddenly finding themselves comfortable on Super One TV, slagging off Gonzi and making it more than crystal clear that Muscat was the man who must become Premier Muscat, and no two ways about it.
In fulfillment of my bounden duty as a fine upstanding citizen to help the police, here’s a quick run-through of the points that they should bear in mind next time a bunch of them are taking a break from deciding who to plague with parking tickets.
Air tickets purchased while a minister, activities with a Swedish connection, activities involving jetting off to Bermuda for such a short time that he met himself coming back, complaints by God-botherers in the States, activities involving using the police themselves to intimidate journalists and media house owners, these are a few of what Dalli probably wouldn’t call his favourite things just about now.
You might very well say that Dalli... [insert any scurrilous comment you like, dear reader]... but I certainly couldn’t comment, quoting my favourite evil civil servant of all time (Francis Urquhart, aka FU, from House of Cards) because I don’t want to get a copper feeling my collar. In fact, all I shall do at this juncture is give the dear chap some free advice, to which I’ve already referred above: you’re in a hole, mate, stop digging.
On the other hand, Dalli should probably keep doing that little thing; it’s starting to become a handy anvil to hang around Premier Muscat’s neck when the time comes for him to jump into the murky waters of electioneering in a couple of years’ time.
Labour and Premier Muscat’s terminally bewildered trolls will, of course, leap to their heroes’ defence and remind us that Dalli was a PN minister, a contender for the leadership of the party, to boot, and a PN nominee as European Commissioner, in which post he signally failed to cover himself in anything approaching glory.
To this one need only respond by saying, yes, sure and along with Dalli, Labour had other PN stalwarts (Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando Smith, to mention but two) putting their shoulder to the wheel of Premier Muscat’s pretty little bandwagon, and you can bask in the sunlight of magnificence, too.
No establishments for the promotion of enjoyable nourishment to suggest this week, as we had a rather jolly family celebration to take up our time, but I must raise my cap to the guys at Fifth Flavour and their people. We had a great party, due in no small measure to their excellence.
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