The journalists who finally pinned Mrs Konrad Mizzi down in China did so not because they tracked her to her lair and flushed her out on their own initiative and at their newspaper’s expense, but because she was handed to them on a plate as part of the delegation which they had been invited, by the prime minister, to follow – with the government picking up the tab. And this, of course, shaped the nature of the questions they asked and the way they handled her answers.

Mrs Mizzi, we were told, had tears in her eyes as she spoke of the way she had been criticised and how it had hurt her. That alone should have been grounds for the press to let rip. Who was the last Maltese politician or political appointee to use tears as a defence against criticism? That’s right: Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando in 2008. It is never acceptable for a politician or political appointee to cry in public or in front of journalists because he or she has been criticised in the press. Mrs Mizzi may think it is somehow more acceptable for her to cry because she is a woman – well, hardly. She serves her gender ill by going all teary-eyed because the horrid, nasty journalists said mean things about her. This is no longer the school playground and we are no longer 12 years old. The headmistress is not going to feel sorry for us and stick up for us and put the other children in the corner for the rest of the day.

 

With her tears and her totally unacceptable reaction to perfectly justified criticism, Mrs Mizzi shows that she comes from a culture which is alien to democracy and the free press, and that despite living in Europe for so many years, she has learned nothing of how these things work, or that political appointees have to learn to take the flak. Worse still, she seems to believe that she is not a political appointee and that her being given the job had absolutely nothing to do with cronyism. Is she really that naive, or does she think that the rest of us are?

 

Sai Mizzi was picked because of who she is as well as because of what she is. Nobody else got a look-in. The position was not advertised in Malta or globally in, say, The Economist. There was no call for applications of interest, and certainly no short list or interviews. Mrs Mizzi told Times of Malta that very few Maltese speak Chinese and that of those, fewer still have the business qualifications that she has. She told the newspaper, with an arrogance that surpasses all understanding and that was the signal for a fusillade of rotten tomatoes, that she is by far the best qualified person for the job. And Times of Malta just sat there and took it – because the government for which Mrs Mizzi works had paid for the newspaper’s ticket to China and handpicked it for the purpose, reducing the situation to a junket for journalists.

 

Shouldn’t Times of Malta have challenged Mrs Mizzi as to how she knows that she is the best qualified for the position? Has she held a call for applications that we know nothing about, and personally interviewed everybody, coming to the conclusion that nobody beats her and so selecting herself? Again, just as with her failure to understand how the free press works in a democracy, Mrs Mizzi just doesn’t seem to understand that you can’t say these things outside an autocratic state and a communist dictatorship because they are considered intolerable. Though not, perhaps, quite so intolerable to journalists who are mindful of the hand that is feeding them in China.

 

The journalists on the China trip did not even bother to ask Mrs Mizzi whether she considers herself to be Chinese or Maltese, whether she holds just the one passport or, abusively, two. The government is on the record somewhere or other as having said that Mrs Mizzi holds Maltese citizenship. This means that, under Chinese law, she has had to relinquish her Chinese citizenship because China does not permit dual citizenship. It is an open secret, however, that those Chinese who are more equal than others are allowed to – nudge, nudge, wink, wink – hold the citizenship of another country besides China. So Mrs Mizzi should have been asked outright whether she is one of these people.

 

This question is extremely relevant because the woman appears to believe that she is working for China, not Malta, and I have begun to suspect that she may be paid by China too, topping up her salary from Malta Enterprise. Boiled down to its essence, her talk during the interview with Times of Malta was all about furthering China’s interests in and through Malta, and not about furthering Malta’s interests with China. Clearly, she can’t distinguish between the two or work out where her loyalties lie. Mrs Mizzi is supposed to be negotiating for Malta. That means Malta’s interests are going to be in conflict with China’s as each party strives to get the better deal. Let’s say a Maltese person has been engaged by China to negotiate with Malta on the grounds that he is Maltese and so knows Maltese culture well (which is Mrs Mizzi’s own argument to justify her engagement). At some point in the negotiations, this person realises that to push for his paymaster’s interests he must go against his home country’s interests. What are his natural inclinations?

 

Mrs Mizzi also told Times of Malta that she cannot possibly be paid €13,000 a month because she is a ‘government employee’ and ‘government employees are on fixed salary scales’. Well, that’s very disingenuous of her and not very astute of the journalist in question to let it go past unchallenged. People who work for state corporations are technically government employees, yes, but they are not public service employees or foreign service employees and so their salaries and allowances are not pegged to the civil/foreign service structure. One of the reasons why state corporations and agencies were created was to allow for flexibility in recruitment, including salary packages for those who would otherwise not have dreamed of leaving the private sector to work for the state. Mrs Mizzi offered to show the journalist documents connected to her salary, but this was just so much blather because while making this vain boast she avoided saying how much she earns. And the journalist didn’t pick up on her offer or tell her, “Well, if you don’t earn €13,000 a month, and if you want to show me your FS3, then why don’t you just tell me here and now how much it is you are paid?”

 

 

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