You know how they say ‘follow the money’? Nobody has even begun to do that in respect of the ever-increasing presence of China on the government’s agenda. Malta’s forced march down this particular road indicates that somebody, somewhere, is likely to be getting something, and it’s not necessarily a straightforward commission on a deal.
But even if it were legal commission on a legal deal, we should know, so as to be able to put matters into context. That the government has shrouded, is shrouding, its Big Chinese Affair in secrecy is not only insulting to those who elected it (the rest of us expected just this sort of thing to happen), it is wrong and undemocratic. It is also extremely hypocritical because these, after all, are the politicians who very cynically made so much fuss about the BWSC power station contract and, at the lowest end of the sliding scale, the finance minister’s clock.
I think we might well find out, when it’s far too late, that clocks did not swing this. But if we find out at all, we should be glad. It is too easy to keep matters of this nature concealed for ever because hard proof is hard to come by and all journalists and electors are left with is their suspicions.
In April three years ago, when he was still Opposition leader and had no business travelling to represent Malta on bilateral agreements, contracts and deals because he was neither the head of government nor a Cabinet minister, Joseph Muscat went to China for talks with government officials. Government officials meet other government officials. They do not meet politicians from the Opposition on government business. But this is China we are talking about, where the formalities are different, and in any case, the trip was organised by that very useful Alex Sceberras Trigona, who in the Golden Years was our foreign minister and a great ally of a Red China then considered a force for evil, rather than an economic power.
Sceberras Trigona also organised Muscat’s first trip to Gaddafi’s power-centre, but that pretty much went belly-up with the events of two years ago, and now AST doesn’t have much clout there anymore, and his contacts are mainly dead, fled or in prison.
George Vella was on that Chinese trip too, so it was clear at the outset that he was going to be our foreign minister and that nobody else would get a look-in, not even the ever-hopeful Sceberras Trigona, who might well be Malta’s new ambassador there, given how strange it is that, despite all his networking for Muscat, he has been given no anointed position yet.
In China, Muscat the Opposition leader was treated like Muscat the Prime Minister. He met the vice-president, Xi Jinping, and the country’s sole news agency, that of the Communist Party, reported that the two “pledged to further bilateral ties and inter-party exchanges”.
But Muscat was in no position to talk about bilateral ties because he did not represent Malta or its government. As for “inter-party exchanges”, China has only one party and it is the permanent government. The Communist Party is China, and in that meeting, both Muscat and China behaved as though the Labour Party is/was Malta. Muscat was reported as having responded that he “was grateful for China-aided projects in Malta”. The Labour Party’s online newspaper, Maltastar, told us that Muscat was “looking forward to discussing the possibilities of collaboration, especially in energy...between China and Malta.”
“Especially in energy”; “between China and Malta” – three years on and we have an election campaign. Labour launches its campaign by telling us that we will have a new power station, one we do not need, but one it has decided we do need to “give us cheaper bills”. Malta under Labour will not build this power station, we were told. An undisclosed entity would build it at its own expense and then sell Malta the power it produces. So Malta will become dependent for its energy on a source over which it has little or no control. That’s the bit they never explained.
The Labour Party is elected to government and on the fourth day of this month, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi announces that the Chinese state-owned monster-company, CPECC, which is a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, is one of the companies “short-listed” for the power station project. Those who took note of that, and connected it to the deal signed in China three years ago, said to themselves, “Indeed. Short-listed? The other names on the short-list are in for a bit of a shock.”
On the 14th of this month, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister had another announcement to make: that another Chinese state-owned mega-company, CCCC, will ever so generously, and with no strings attached, be donating to Malta a €4 million study on the building of a fixed link (bridge) between Malta and Gozo. There is nobody over the age of 15, unless he led an incredibly sheltered life, who still believes there is any such thing as a free lunch, still less a donation of €4 million from China with no strings attached, conditional deals made, and so on. Reporters began asking questions, though nowhere near enough of them. When the Prime Minister was asked about this on camera, his face took on that tell-tale look of piercing concentration, with furrowed brow and eyes fixed unblinkingly on the reporter asking the difficult question (to throw him off balance), a look that disappears immediately he begins answering, which is also a dead give-away.
And his response, recorded on camera, was that the deal struck with China for the fixed-link study “had to be taken because of the other issues involved – mysterious issues on which he failed to elaborate, but which we can readily guess at. His precise words were “fil-qafas ta’ l-affarijiet ohra li qed niddiskutu bhalissa mal-gvern Ciniz....[Din hi] wahda mill-affarijiet li l-gvern Ciniz jixtieq jghin fih bhalissa.”
It’s not a coincidence, is it? We shall soon hear, I suspect, that China is to own the power station on which Malta is to become dependent for electricity, and that faced with a choice between dependency on Europe (through connection to the Sicilian grid), Joseph Muscat’s government has chosen dependency on China.
Yes, in all these situations you have to follow the money, especially when there is no other, rational, explanation. Why is China so keen to give us a €4 million study? And more to the point, why is Muscat’s government so keen to accept? Who is doing the negotiating here, and is it strictly at government level or is there a sub- (business) level where deals are being struck?
The Prime Minister’s response was particularly odd when he was asked about the ‘bridge’ company being blacklisted by the World Bank. When you carry out due diligence, he said to impress the clueless, you do due diligence on the end owner, not the company. China is the end owner and we all know what China is worth economically, he said. We don’t need to do due diligence on China. That is just the problem. Unfortunately, no reporter picked up on the Prime Minister’s absolutely flawed logic: with his reasoning, the World Bank has blacklisted China, not the company. But it hasn’t.