It is half past five on Wednesday evening and I’ve just had a quick trawl through the news portals, the main ones, anyway, and there is neither hide nor hair of any hint of condemnation by the Labour Party of the racist publication made by one of its candidates for election to Parliament in place of the shiny new European commissioner.

The wannabe ‘Honourable’ in question is Robert Henry Bugeja and he published his racist views on Facebook. The story was reported at eight in the morning on Wednesday and not a peep has been heard from his party. I’m not about to dignify Bugeja’s views by repeating them, suffice it to say that they are as racist, if not more, as Joseph Muscat’s misguided “push back” remarks, the difference being that Muscat was being provocative (at least, I hope he was, the alternative is too horrible to contemplate) while Bugeja seems to hold his views firmly.

It is true that the inconsequential opinion of a nonentity is not worth much more than the paper on which you’re reading this in its raw state but the failure of the Labour Party to condemn him and bar him from running under its banner is vitally more important.

I made the point that I checked out the ‘main’ portals because the lesser ones, iNews (aka as l-Orizzont/It-Torċa) and the MaltaToday/Illum stable are hardly going to carry any sort of condemnation. The latter, always so eager to grind their axes and shoot their mouths off when there’s any news that suits the cut of their jib, even reported a horrendous piece of rabid racism spewed by the convicted criminal Norman Lowell as straight news, without even a whiff of criticism.

Things have come to a pretty pass when one minister has to chide another for failing to answer parliamentary questions

Lowell and his ilk should not be given even the slightest breath of oxygen for their criminal activities: I am a firm believer in the dirty hands principle (you can’t sup at the table of fundamental rights – such as freedom of thought or expression – if you don’t subscribe to other, even more important, rights) and that those news portals, which adopt such a sanctimonious attitude on such a wide variety of subjects, to abet this criminal, even unconsciously, speaks volumes about them.

Things have come to a pretty pass when one minister has to chide another for failing to answer parliamentary questions.

It was reported that Minister Evarist Bartolo expressed the view that questions on ministerial travel expenses should be answered in full and without prevarication. Apparently, some of his colleagues had fobbed off their interlocutors with a sort-of school-yard jibe on the lines of ‘convince me you have a good reason to want the answer and I might give it to you’.

Before we run away with the idea that Bartolo is some sort of knight in shining armour, incidentally, it seems that he answered the same question in much the same way, but, in what has become his trademark, he blamed his officials, promising a fuller answer soon.

Bartolo was saying nothing that was not a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, either.

It is axiomatic that it is the right of the great unwashed, through the kind offices of their elected representatives, to know how and why our exalted ministers, honourable gentlemen and ladies one and all, are spending the money that we have given them to run the country.

In days gone by, nothing was thought of questions being put as to the number of mobile phones allocated to the ministers’ secretariats or the size and distribution of profiteroles during festive gatherings, and the questions would be answered. Today, one hears, things are different: issues of data protection and commercial sensitivity are raised whenever pointed questions are asked.

These sensitivities were never raised, I know for a fact, when questions were put about the fees paid to me for professional services: the world and his brother knows how much I was paid, a matter that causes me no concern whatsoever because, like the bird in the cosmetics ads, I’m worth it.

The thing is, though, that this is a government elected on, among other battle cries, one of transparency and openness.

It seems they define these terms using Sir Humphrey Appleby’s lexicon. ‘Hypocrites’ is the epithet that springs to mind, so strongly that one of their own was moved to feel mildly uncomfortable about the way the two words have taken on Orwellian aspects.

Another of their battle cries was ‘Death to Arriva: out with the foreign devils!’ and it served them well.

Minister Joseph Mizzi, whose take on our traffic nightmare (which is unfolding on his watch) is that it is just a perception, is drip-feeding us with information that is slowly constituting a body of evidence to prove that his party’s concerted attack on Arriva was nothing more and nothing less than cynical political opportunism at its very worst.

The Spanish (note: not Maltese, foreign) operators are to be given a subsidy that outstrips Arriva’s by more than a country mile.

Moreover, fares are going to rise, unless Mizzi is speaking with a tongue more forked than usual.

We’ve already seen the service deteriorate to levels that are approaching those to which Dom Mintoff had brought it, 30-odd years ago, and there’s precious little prospect that anything is going to change in this regard.

And for all this, dear John Citizen, you and I will be paying, through our taxes and through the fares of those who have no choice but to use the buses.

While stuck in traffic on the road from St Julian’s to Naxxar, during which time I was long enough in San Ġwann to qualify for their ‘Ġieħ San Ġwann’ medal, I tweeted my own take on Mizzi, pointing out that I was stuck in the perception that he was a waste of skin. I hasten to point out, before some officious copper is moved to summon me for dangerous driving, that I was stationary with no hope of moving at the time.

You might, and you will be very right, say that the stuff I’ve written about this week is of little significance in the greater scheme of things.

This was a week when an attempt on the life of a police inspector and his young family was perpetrated. Evidence of State-sponsored slavery, aided and abetted by what are starting to be referred to as ‘the usual suspects’, is coming out starkly.

Pre-electoral promises – and under the counter deals – made by the Labour Party are flocking home to roost at the door of the Prime Minister.

Compared to these things, my subjects might pale slightly but I submit for your consideration that even they are important because they bring into stark relief the way the people at the top think they can run our lives, without even a cursory nod at the proprieties that should govern their behaviour.

Even in their personal lives, certain of them have started to disappoint us, too, but there’s no chance that any of them will adopt the correct course of action and step aside to sort out their lives. It seems that this way of doing things is only resorted to when it allows Muscat to spin us the yarn that he has a British sense of humour.

I close with a humble, grovelling apology: I mistakenly, nay negligently, set Nabucco in a venue other than the one where it was put on with such triumphant merit.

It was performed at the Astra in Gozo, not that other place, and it speaks volumes for the kindness and tolerance of the gentlefolk of Pjazza San Ġorġ that I was allowed to partake of a pre-prandial tot or two of Scottish nectar on Sunday without being kicked into the middle of next week.

imbocca@gmail.com

http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs