There are times when we have to hope that our sense of the ridiculous does not desert us. Take yesterday, for example, when the Labour Party released the news that “DJ Clint Bajada” has taken over from Ray Azzopardi as head of its radio station, One. Azzopardi, we were told, “has held that position for 22 years, but is now expected to be given a diplomatic post abroad”. Yes, indeed – he is the new ambassador to Belgium. Meanwhile, Bajada “has been with One throughout his career”. Well, if Bajada grits his teeth and hangs on in there, he can expect to be made Malta’s ambassador to France in three years’ time.
A sense of the ridiculous is required, too, to absorb the news that the Labour Party has launched a school of “broadcasting and the arts”. It is to be run by the party’s propaganda machine and will be called The One Academy for Broadcasting and the Arts. Its aim, the press release says, is “the development of media skills for young people”. What, exactly, are the media and broadcasting skills that the Labour Party’s propaganda machine can possibly teach, except by negative example?
There’s more. Given the alacrity with which cabinet ministers and their hangers-on and spouses are grabbing at any paltry excuse to go on jollies, rather than work, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the government has become a sort of giant travel agency for those who are, to quote the notorious words of the prime minister’s wife in a Sunday magazine, determined to “make the most of it”. The government delegation to China was farcically large for a state with a population of less than half a million. Now a whole bunch of them are in New York City with the prime minister. And yesterday we were told that another party has seized the opportunity of a few days of feeling important among the super-rich in Monaco. The boat show is on there at the moment, so of course, because Malta has many hundreds of yacht berths to sell and a vast yacht-building industry, it was absolutely necessary for a high-level delegation to go there, composed of Transport Minister Joe Mizzi, Parliamentary Secretary Edward Zammit Lewis and Transport Malta chairman James Piscopo to go there. Did their ladies go, too? Their hangers-on? We have not been told. Perhaps somebody will spot them on the plane and tell us. You would imagine that it would be sufficient for the marina managers to be there – after all, it’s their business. But no – we really need Joe Mizzi, Edward Zammit Lewis and James Piscopo to schmooze with the gadzillionaires and charm them with their sophistication, conversational skills and lovely manners. You’d think these people had never been on a trip in their lives, and were waiting to get into government to see the world.
It’s nice to see our prime minister so busily engaged in bilateral meetings. The Department of Information press releases have kept us up to date on his dealings over the last couple of weeks: China, Algeria, Egypt and Libya. Fascinating – it feels like the Golden Years all over again. How good it would be to hear news of some form of engagement with a few European democracies.
On another note, all right – Mrs Konrad Mizzi wanted to go back home to Shanghai. It’s not for any of us to pass judgement on that. If a Maltese woman were married to a Chinese politician and living in Shanghai, she might after a few years become terribly homesick, tired of the alien culture and odd, invasive people, and long for home to the point where it becomes unbearable. But was it necessary for her to go back home on a salary from the Maltese government? It doesn’t make the government look at all good, it undermines Konrad Mizzi’s credibility (to quote his own words back at him: “Shame on you, Sur Ministru”). Worse, it heightens the growing perception that this government is stuffed to the gills with people out for what they can get, with absolute disregard for those who voted for ‘something better’, and who are now feeling like complete suckers.
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