The society, it needs more training – so we make the David

Daphne Caruana Galizia Sunday, 28 July 2013, 09:17 Last update: about 11 years ago

The government has appointed a cook to the Malta Council of Science and Technology (a cook married to Jesmond Mugliett, who has been appointed to the boards of the Foundation for Tomorrow’s Schools and Malta Enterprise) and it has also appointed somebody who can’t communicate in English to the board of Malta Enterprise. There are probably more appointees on that board with the same failing and worse, but David Bonello stands out in this respect because of the long, long string of letters after his name. And yet this comes straight from his profile on Linked in: “In my opinion education will always be struggle where all those of a good intention will feel a bit oppressed by the social context they live and work in. However, it is hoped that in the future all those who are involved in the educational field will be treated in better manner by the society since they provide knowledge for the economy.”

By the society... if anything tells you that this man mentally translates literally from Maltese to English, then this is it: mis-socjeta. Maltese uses the definite article in this context, but English does not. People who are constantly exposed to English in their work, reading and film-watching will not make this mistake. So why does David Bonello make it, when he has presumably read rather a lot of books and papers to acquire that string of letters after his name? The inability of some people to learn languages without constant reference to their own is quite a strong reflection on their intelligence, or the lack of it.

And this is somebody who has been chosen by the government to sit on the Employment and Training Corporation.

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The threat to push back migrants after first selecting only the healthy males for re-export has backfired badly. So the Prime Minister and his Minister for Police Bikinis and Half a Million in Cash have come up with another dramatic gesture which they hope will force “Europe” to do their bidding. It’s the silly season, so why not get sillier?

They have triggered the emergency mechanism which is supposed to be done only when there is... an emergency situation. There clearly is none. Immigrant arrivals are what they were, or less than what they were, in earlier summers. The police and armed forces are so relaxed and able to cope that they have been able to use two police RHIBs and several police officers to take a group of German policewomen in bikinis round Comino and to Ghadira for a day of sunbathing, swimming and water-picnics. There are no boats laden with immigrants sinking in Maltese waters because the Maltese ‘navy’ (well, the Prime Minister told Al Jazeera that we have one) is too under-resourced to rescue them. And the only crisis in the detention camps is that the army colonel put in charge of them, presumably as a punishment measure for the political views he is not permitted to have in this free country (views which he has never voiced, incidentally, because he is a good soldier), has resigned, while the Civil Protection Department manager who has been sent there for similar reasons has filed a judicial protest against the government.

The decision to trigger the last-resort-real-emergency mechanism when there is no such emergency or even the slightest sign of one is a demonstration of just how infantile and irresponsible the prime minister and his yes-men are. ‘Emergency mechanism’ is not just a name. Doing this at international level is the equivalent of dialling 112 and calling out a fleet of ambulances, fire engines and police cars because you’ve opened a tin can and drawn blood from your finger.

But there’s worse. They’ve triggered the emergency mechanism yet say they don’t want the European Union’s border patrol agency to get involved, because it will abide by international law and EU practice and bring boatloads of immigrants to land... in Malta. We ask them to help imma mhux jekk igibulna izjed suwed.

Exactly what else would this mean, quoted in Times of Malta?

“The government is still reluctant to involve the EU’s border patrol agency in joint patrols of its shores since it considers the rules governing such missions not to be in Malta’s interests.”

The catastrophic blunders and deliberate decisions being taken by Joseph Muscat and his Cabinet have been attributed, by some of the embarrassed people who voted for them, to “immaturity and inexperience in government”. Oh indeed. How is it, then, that so many of us who have never governed, including the people who say this, can see what they are doing wrong? It is a gross mistake to assume that we can see it but they can’t. The real truth is that this is exactly what they want to do, which is why they are doing it, and that they know full well what the consequences will be and either don’t give a damn or actually see those consequences as desirable.