Labour’s tenure in government is increasingly looking like a dysfunctional marriage to the country. We all accept that every marriage has its ups and downs. In this marriage, however, the public gets all the downs and Labour gets all the ups. They’re in it for better and for richer, we’re stuck with for poorer and for worse. It’s an abusive marriage.
Before the marriage, it was all sweet talk and road maps, looking our best and making the best promises. Everything would be shared, taghna lkoll.
Betrayal began during the honeymoon itself. So did being taken for granted. The scandals keep piling up, week upon week, day after day, sometimes even from one hour to the next.
Labour’s answer is to give it another chance. It’s never its own fault. Sometimes it’s even because it loves us too much. Yes, that is what Joseph Muscat’s own excuse was with the Café Premier scandal. He was so keen to do good for the country that he cut corners on proper procedure.
The government gets caught in bed with [fill in the scandal of your choice]… but, honey, it’s not what it looks like.
At least the Government’s henchmen are not beating us up and blaming us for it (as it did during the golden years).
The result is that we are all becoming so used to the lies, the stench, the corruption and the sheer incompetence, that we’ve become used to it. We’re like one of those spouses who say nothing when there’s a tantrum in the house even though friends look at the couple in astonishment and ask how they can take it.
The chaos in the public transport ticketing system? We are being taken so much for granted that the transport minister, Joe Mizzi, thinks he can simply issue an apology for ‘the inconvenience’.
Inconvenience, eh? Tell that to the short-changed bus users. Or the hopping mad tourists telling their friends to stay away.
Mizzi says that he’s going to have a word with the operator. But the line of responsibility goes back directly to him. He’s the one who personally – and against every code of proper practice – negotiated with the operator before the tender was awarded.
Well, at least now we can cheer up all those tourists wearing a top that says their aunt went to Malta and all they got was a lousy T-shirt.
They’re better off than us. We live in Malta and we’re stuck with a minister in a T-shirt.
In sickness and in health
Last Saturday, Joseph Muscat and Konrad Mizzi thought they found the best solution to distract attention from the serial Marco Gaffarena and Daniel Zammit scandals.
In the afternoon, rumour had it that things were brewing in the health sector. The country did not hold its breath. In no time we read online that the preferred bidder for the investment €200 million had been chosen.
For a few seconds, the news made headlines on all news portals… but, by Sunday morning, the big news made it only to page 5.
Muscat is really losing his plot. He announces an investment of €200 million through a press statement? Where was all the glitz and glamour?
In March, the Prime Minister and no fewer than five or six other senior Labour figures crowded together to witness Barts signing an MOU (which we have not yet seen). That was not the investment but it was paraded with fanfare.
How strange that, now that the bidder has been chosen, we just get a press statement and a personal bit of information for each newspaper? Even an idiot would realise that there is something very wrong here.
For heaven’s sake, Muscat called a press conference to announce a two-cent reduction in the price of gas. Yet, no press conference to confirm the €200 million investment? There is something very fishy going on here.
I will not delve further into the matter for the moment. But I am hoping journalists will really take this issue seriously. There were three bidders for the privatisation of our health system. Has anybody been doing some serious soul searching and due diligence on these companies?
I am sure that more will be revealed in the future. I just hope what we find out will not be dangerous to our health.