The government has continued with its practice of appointing cronies to public office and calling it feminism and ‘equality’ because they are women. The latest two are Go plc’s corporate lawyer, Ingrid Zammit Young, and Caroline Farrugia Frendo, whose father was sacked from his position of deputy leader of the Labour Party and then silenced with an appointment to exalted public office as Speaker of the House.
Zammit Young is to be made a magistrate despite spending her entire, brief legal career writing final demands to the telephony company’s debtors and filing against them in the Small Claims Tribunal. Farrugia Frendo is deemed fit for purpose despite spending her entire, brief law career in daddy’s office, dealing with the dross while he dealt with the rest, which was also largely dross. The law says that people can’t be appointed magistrates who haven’t had at least seven years of litigation experience. So they waited until Anglu Farrugia’s daughter was three days past the barrier (seven years and three days today) and made the announcement. She is 33.
Most of the discussion so far, at least at the time of writing this last night, has centred on her age, lack of experience and the seven-year rule. But those should not be the main event. Those are just the factors which make the real reason for objection worse than it already is: contemptible cronyism, despicable nepotism, the bane of all Prickly Pear Republics as it is the bane of all Banana Republics and of Rice and Vodka Dictatorships. Talk about age, experience and fitness for purpose should not blind us to the crux of the matter, which lies in the answer to the question: why was Caroline Farrugia Frendo chosen to become a magistrate? The answer is: it was probably part of the deal which the incoming Labour government struck with Anglu Farrugia when he was made Speaker of the House in 2013 – that as soon as the seven years were up, she would be made a magistrate. At least they had a modicum of decency in waiting three days.
This is not about fitness for purpose, age or experience. This is about corruption and cronyism. When the government hands out appointments to public office – especially to high public office and permanent public office, as with appointments to the bench which are sinecures for life – on the basis of cronyism and nepotism, it is corruption. It is not corruption under the law only because Malta’s laws have not caught up with those of more civilised and democratic parts of Europe. It may not be de jure corruption (corruption under the law), but it remains de facto corruption (corruption in fact) all the same.
The Opposition probably feels that it can’t tackle this aspect of the matter – the only aspect it should tackle, with the rest being merely secondary – because it will get comebacks from a bitchy Joseph Muscat of the ‘why don’t you see what you did’ variety. But that’s just the point. It’s time for a new way, a 21st-century way, and the Nationalist Party needs to put its foot down once and for all about all this blatant and disgusting cronyism. If the government begins to bitch – for that is the only word – about the appointments his predecessors made, the Opposition has got to respond, “It’s not going to happen under our watch. So why are you doing this when you promised people you wouldn’t? Why are you filling every public post in the land with cronies who, as though their cronyism were not bad enough, are wholly unfit for purpose?”
As for Caroline Farrugia Frendo herself, she clearly has no pride or sense of dignity at all. She’s just 33 and she has given up already on forging a bright career in the field of law and has had daddy twist the Prime Minister’s arm into giving her a job she can never lose. At 33, she has fixed her path to stay exactly the same until she turns 65, safe from the twists and turns of the economic hurricane, from 33 to her pension. She will, of course, also have a free car, free phone and chauffeur for the next 32 years, but it’s scant compensation for starting a late-middle-aged life in your early 30s, thanks to the fact that the Prime Minister owed your daddy a rather large favour in 2013.
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