Secrecy is just not on in Malta, no matter what impression the Prime Minister may want to give. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

In the months following the demise of the Labour regime in 1987, members of the protest group Tan-Numri got together with many others to draft a satirical programme on national television, which came to be called Aħn’aħna jew M’aħniex.

Some of those people went in for the job still smarting bloodied noses from Labour violence. They chose to take a humorous approach to those oppressive Labour years that had ruined their youth. It was really the only way to cope with the horrendous onslaught on human rights the country suffered at the hands of Dom Mintoff and his successor Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici: the best antidote was to humour it and celebrate the right of freedom of expression through satire.

One of the ideas for the 30-minute programme was a weekly call from a telephone booth in Tibet, once an autonomous country with immense culture and a centre of Buddhist belief, to this day beautifully epitomised by that holy man the Dalai Lama.

The formula was a simple one: the caller would phone in to complain on the state of Tibet, the obvious implication being that he would actually be speaking of Malta.

The idea nearly got off the ground, but suddenly we hit a snag. Protests had broken out in Tibet calling for freedom and independence from communist China that has occupied that land since 1950 and exiled the Dalai Lama. The protests were met with violence as China’s oppressive police clamped down hard on the demonstrators.

Tibet was no longer a curious, faraway land but a place of oppression, and the idea of a telephone booth in Tibet had to be dropped. The obvious alternative was a fictitious country that was initially called Ċukadudu, but during rehearsals shortened to Ċukaj. It was a land where people lived in igloos and went around in sledges and had an uncanny resemblance to the Maltese.

Aħn’aħna jew M’aħniex was not an immediate success. The audiences of the national (and only) television station were used to the likes of Emmy Bezzina sitting on a large armchair, holding polite discussions as the country burnt.

We ask what we please, Mr Prime Minister, and the more awkward the questions, the better for our democracy

But viewers did catch on. They realised it was no longer taboo to speak of water cuts, a problem that plagued the country throughout the 1980s, thanks to some Mintoffian philosophy harking back to Mao Zedong.

They realised you could actually speak out without having your head beaten to a pulp by some Labour thug.

Freedom of expression, and of the press, had returned to Malta. The Nationalists were back in office.

Press freedom has since flourished and social media has pulled the carpet from underneath anyone wishing to stem, or control, the fundamental right of freedom of expression. Everyone can see that, except for the Prime Minister.

• In his short career before he shot to stardom with messianic attributes (not exactly like the Dalai Lama’s, though), Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was an apparatchik for the Labour media. He was his master’s voice and never learnt how the free press operates.

That is why he was in a quandary when faced with media questions at the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Chinese company Huawei Technologiesso they may carry out their experiments in Malta.

Speaking in not much better English than his business envoy and ‘salesman’ to Asia Sai Mizzi Liang, Muscat was at a loss at explaining what was the big deal about a Chinese company opening an office in Malta manned by 10 Chinese.

So he told us not to look for millions of euros just yet, because he “dreaded” putting pen to paper on what was financially in store for Malta once that miniscule office starts its tests. The inevitable question from the press arose: how does all this square with the €13,000 a month Mizzi Liang was getting?

The Prime Minister told the journalist that it was not the way to behave in front of ‘foreign guests’. True, those Huawei people are not used to press freedom back home but they sure must know about democracies. They didn’t look uncomfortable, but the Prime Minister did because God only knows how he speaks behind closed doors about a country he runs like a fiefdom.

When pressed, an irate Prime Minister said: “It looked like a stupid question to our guests.” However, the question wasn’t addressed to the Huawei guests but to him.

Only days before he had heaped praise on the Energy Minister’s wife for her work in attracting this Chinese company, blacklisted in some countries over security concerns. It was a simple question Muscat was asked: where’s the beef?

Mizzi Liang did try to butt in and answer the journalist but Muscat checked her. She had asked for it. Just moments before, as she made the introduction in front of ‘foreign guests’, she had mocked this country’s taxpayers by saying “you’ve finally found me”.

Let’s hope that’s not some Chinese humour she was applying because it wasn’t funny. It was offensive and arrogant.

• The boys and girls from Aħn’aħna jew M’aħniex would have a heyday with China if they were still around today, except that this Labour-China connection is not funny and a telephone call from Tibet in this new day and age would cause more than a diplomatic flurry in no time.

True, China is a huge economy and countries around the world are scrambling to do business there. In our case, it is not about doing business there, but here. Communist China has a strong hold on our energy company and possibly soon our national airline. Labour says this is foreign investment, and it would be if these were genuine foreign private investments and not companies owned by the communist Chinese government.

But Labour has a problem with doing business with companies from democracies. Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi is more comfortable doing business in Azerbaijan, although what he goes there for he won’t tell.

That is why there are questions to be asked and to be answered. For Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, this “constant hovering” by the media was ridiculous and could scare off investment.

What is ridiculous is his government’s secrecy about everything. Even a simple contract with a foreign bus company will not be published because, according to Transport Minister Joe Mizzi, it would be used by the Opposition to criticise his abysmal failure in the sector.

Scicluna says the government is ready to welcome investment from anyone, without prejudice, whether those investors are black or “their eyes are stretched”.

But the questions being levelled are not the result of prejudice but a reaction to Labour spin and secrecy that treats people like gullible idiots: secrecy breeds suspicion and only raises questions.

Clearly, the Finance Minister lives by the old Maltese saying Malta qatt ma rrifjutat qamħ (Malta never turned down aid). That’s what turned Malta into the whore of the Mediterranean during the Mintoff years. This country has since grown up.

In a democracy journalists ask questions and it is useless that the Prime Minister gets miffed when someone questions charade events like that Huawei launch.

Next time a big shot from communist China comes to colonial Labour Malta, it would be a good idea if some journalist asked our ‘foreign guest’ about Tibet. He’ll no doubt be ready with a prepared answer that would sound as fake as that Malta Tagħna Lkoll electoral rip-off. But it would still be worth the asking, just to remind our Chinese friends that, whatever Labour may tell them behind closed doors, this is a democracy and oppression and secrecy is not on by our standards, neither in Tibet nor in this country.

Malta is not a Chinese colony; it’s not Tibet, nor Ċukaj. We ask what we please, Mr Prime Minister, and the more awkward the questions, the better for our democracy.