Roberta Metsola, who was elected to the European Parliament on the Nationalist Party ticket, is leading a petition for European action against the location of an enormous floating gas-storage unit (with a surface area the size of three football pitches) at Marsaxlokk.
If that thing explodes, it will wipe out not only the homes in the area, as some people seem to believe, reassuring themselves that it will only affect ‘those people down there’ (oh, so that’s all right then), but directly and indirectly, Malta’s entire infrastructure. Daily life will become extremely difficult, and the economy, with limited electricity, water, telephony and internet, will grind to a halt. A blast of that magnitude will hit the Freeport directly and will reach the airport.
That the government is willing to risk something like this despite the public outrage and the possible consequences of catastrophe, can mean only one thing – as it does with the sale of citizenship: that there may well be commitments made by the Labour Party, when it was in Opposition, about which we know nothing. These commitments will now be taking precedence over everything else. The government’s cavalier disregard for the safety of the country, for the peace of mind of its people, is astonishing even to long-term observers.
The government reacted to Mrs Metsola’s petition not by saying that she is working against the national interest (maybe they have understood that they are beginning to parody themselves) but by blaming the Opposition leader. Simon Busuttil is trying to deny The People lower electricity tariffs and cleaner air quality, the government statement said. This petition is just an attempt at alarming The People because the Opposition is annoyed that the government’s plans are on track.
Given that the deals may have been struck before the Labour Party formed the government, there is no surprise about that. It would have been surprising had they not been on track. The People voted for change in the energy sector, the statement continued, but the Opposition is trying to cast doubts on the power station procurement process and the attendant environmental planning. I hadn’t noticed that the Opposition was trying to do that. In fact I think the Opposition has been rather muted on the subject generally.
People – sorry, The People – have been able to reach certain conclusions for themselves. That the vast majority of Maltese people can’t think straight and are easily befuddled with misinformation and propaganda put about by false prophets in the Labour Party, does not mean that everybody else is like that. There is a large minority of clear thinkers who observe everything, read the news, and analyse matters. They then reach conclusions without finding it necessary to be told what to think by political leaders of whatever stripe.
The fact remains that the floating gas storage unit will remain an ever-present problem and an ever-present risk. And over and above that, we risk losing EU funding for a gas pipeline and an interconnector between Malta and Sicily on the grounds that we have made alternative provisions for power. The situation is insane, but that’s because we don’t know what has been going on behind the scenes. I am sure it all makes perfect sense from the perspective of those involved.
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I have already lost count of the number of times various Cabinet ministers have used the Attorney-General as a crutch. This was an old habit of Prime Minister Mintoff’s, and hasn’t been done since. The latest such tactic was a few days ago, when the parliamentary secretary for justice, Owen Bonnici, told the assembled press that “the Attorney-General has expressed doubts as to whether the actions amounted to bribery of those who made use of meters that had been tampered with” (in translation from Maltese).
My, what obfuscating language: Orwellian Newspeak, except that Bonnici probably never read the book. Using a fixed meter to steal electricity is one crime, and he’s right, it’s not bribery. But there’s another crime in this equation: paying an Enemalta official to fix your meter so that you can steal electricity. And yes, that most definitely is bribery. Bribery is when you pay a public officer or state corporation employee to provide you with a service to which you are not entitled, and which he should not be giving you.
The police, however, are “free to take criminal action if they wish”, the justice PS said. Why does he feel he should point that out? And why does Bonnici say ‘wish’ rather than ‘should’, as though the police prosecute when they want to rather than when they have to? We are supposed to be living in an EU member state where the police force is autonomous from the government on matters of criminal prosecution and does not take instruction from it. This government, though, seems to be going out of its way to make us think otherwise, largely through the efforts of Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia. What a sad situation.
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