The mind boggles when you try to think what went through the heads of those police officers who raided an office in Mosta to investigate a case of fraud and money laundering only to be confronted by the incredible accusation: “You are hindering foreign direct investment in Malta.”
That was former Labour Party treasurer and candidate Joe Sammut’s reaction when the police went to his office. He is now facing a series of charges including helping Libyans set up companies here to obtain residency using forged documents.
The funny thing is that Sammut’s reaction sounds genuine because he reflects exactly the Labour mindset.
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said no steps could be taken against Sammut because he is no longer part of the Labour Party, a party void of any sense of values or ethics.
The problem Muscat has is that Labour is full of people who think like Sammut and if he had to take any action, he would not know where to start.
They use the same vocabulary as Sammut, as Nationalist Party deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami pointed out.
The Sammut way of thinking is symptomatic of a Labour government that thinks that the end always justifies the means. The party follows in the footsteps of Dom Mintoff, who had no problem rubbing shoulders with the likes of Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Il-sung and Nikolai Ceaușescu if he thought he could wring some cash out of those dictators. To hell with the country’s reputation and dignity, to hell with values, democracy and human rights so long as it brought money.
Muscat works much the same way, except that he goes for relatively smaller fry, if we ignore Malta’s uncanny relations with dictatorial Azerbaijan. Instead of dictators, Muscat likes people with wads of money, the more the merrier.
That is why he came up with a scheme to sell Maltese citizenship, the worst thing any government can do to denigrate a country it governs in trust. That is why he sells visas and residence permits to the likes of people who may otherwise try Sammut’s office.
He thinks they bring progress when they actually just give a very bad name to the country. There is chaos out there with our visas and passports.
The country is not being governed but taken for a ride as it gets plundered until stocks last
Last week, it emerged in court that 50 foreigners had declared the same official address in Sliema when they applied to Identity Malta for identity cards, visas and residence permits.
The majority were Libyans. A Libyan businessman was also arraigned over possession of nine Libyan passports, all of which, his lawyer said, were being delivered to apply for a visa to enter Malta.
Labour calls it foreign investment, or foreign talent attracted to our irresistible Malta. The only people likely to be attracted to this island are people who like to keep their deals in the dark, away from the public eye. They find in Labour a natural ally. Labour likes backroom deals.
• Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi, who excels at Labour secrecy, was caught with his pants down last week in Ta’ Xbiex. No, not literally, of course, because he is a happily married man whose wife lives on another continent earning €13,000 a month from our taxes. Mizzi told the court that as a minister he had a reputation to uphold and that allegations of infidelity could affect his future re-election prospects.
The truth is he has much more serious reasons to fear his re-election than a blog post and that is his atrocious performance as a government minister.
Nationalist Party media reported last week he went to a meeting at Shanghai Electric offices at Whitehall Mansions, in Ta’ Xbiex.
There is nothing extraordinary in that because that Chinese government-owned company owns a good chunk of our energy supply and may have quite a few questions to ask about what exactly is the government doing in providing a €360 million guarantee to a competitor.
The problem is that the car he travelled in did not carry government number plates, implying he wanted to keep the meeting secret. So the PN media went and waited outside Whitehall Mansions to ask him: what’s up doc, what are you doing here? He said nothing, of course. He never does. He won’t tell this country why he went three times to Azerbaijan, so why should he tell us what he is doing in Ta’ Xbiex?
For all his constant slipping into English whenever he speaks, Mizzi behaves like a true lower class Mintoffian who thinks he is answerable to no one. Mintoff too had no respect for the mob that elected him.
Back in the golden years of Labour, local media often found out that Mintoff was abroad from foreign news services. That insolent is Labour.
Maybe Mizzi was discussing the ‘strategic alliance’ between Enemalta and Shanghai Electric, which led to the setting up of a new company that has just landed a project for a 46 megawatt wind farm in Montenegro. But what’s so secret about that?
This is exactly what the communist Chinese intended when they bought shares into our bankrupt energy company, a passport to Europe. No wonder the offices of Shanghai Electric are located inside the same building as those of Henley & Partners, who sell our passports like they own this country.
Mizzi won’t tell us either what exactly his government has committed itself to when it signed an agreement with Shanghai Electric. To be fair, he’s not the only one on the Cabinet to like to keep things secret and to treat people like imbeciles.
• Another Mizzi, the Transport Minister, likewise won’t publish the contract the government signed with Autobuses de Leon, under which they are receiving €30 million a year. He said he didn’t want the Opposition to make political capital of it, which means there’s something to hide.
Taxpayers have a right to know why they are subsidising the ramshackle public transport service at such an incredible amount but Joe Mizzi too treats people as imbeciles.
Unfortunately for Mizzi, he was the fall guy last week when the government suggested earlier school hours for children to ease the traffic congestion that will clog our streets to the point of madness come the next scholastic year.
It was not Mizzi’s suggestion but that of Education Minister Evarist Bartolo whose ministry published a White Paper, evidently to waste people’s time.
Because what is the point of the White Paper if Bartolo himself said: “Of course, I am against forcing children out of bed at 5.30am”?
Mizzi said he couldn’t work miracles to solve the immense traffic problem that has turned our streets into an infuriating hell. That much everyone agrees to.
It took the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry to spell out the reality of Labour’s abysmal failure in this sector.
It said the problem is not solved with a string of knee-jerk recommendations in the hope they turn out effective.
Sadly, knee-jerk is how Labour runs the country because it never had any plans.
Its one objective was power and now it applies populism, topped by handouts, public appointments and building permits, as a means to maintain that power.
PN leader Simon Busuttil was so apt when he said Labour has ‘colonised’ the public sector through the deployment of party sympathisers.
Party cronies do not deliver the goods for the country.
We can see that all around us. Their loyalty lies with a party and not the country. Labour appointees will never solve the traffic problem because it would involve bold decisions that cost their masters votes.
So instead we get white papers or white elephants like a monorail.
The country is not being governed but taken for ride as it gets plundered until stocks last.