The recent news that the owner of 17 Black was none other than Jorgen Fenech, the CEO of Tumas Group, one of the partners in the new gas fired power station, is really mind jolting. The Dubai company 17 Black was identified in a leaked e-mail as one of two sources of income for the Panama companies Hearnville and Tillgate, which were set up by OPM consultants Nexia BT for Dr Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri. If ever there was a smoking gun it is here, but our dear Prime Minister has said that he is going to do nothing until the magisterial enquires are concluded. In my book, this is just an arrogant way for playing for time. We have an arrogant Labour party in government that is drunk on power and money. It just decided to play for time when a connection between the new power station and its mechanism for kickbacks has been made clear even though the early discovery of the Panama accounts meant that the corrupt perpetrators did not have much time to deposit enough funds. Notwithstanding the dispositions were clear all the time and that it did not happen was beyond the intentions of Dr Mizzi and Mr. Schembri.
What is surprising is Dr Muscat’s reluctance to fire them outright which leads one to two conclusions. Either he has lost control of the situation and they are eating out of his hat, making him much weaker than he likes to give the impression of being, or they have some hold on him because maybe there are some things that he does not want us to know. He seems to think that he can buy everyone’s silence with money but this will not be enough to stop things coming to the surface. That things have come to this in our dear island is a real pity. As the government feels more smug and complacent, its attitude of sheer arrogance increases by the hour.
Imagine giving a direct order to a cleaning or service company that did not even exist prior to the service being offered and that this order amounts to around €300,000? Whatever happened to tendering? No wonder there are so few objections to tender offers at present. They have been replaced by direct orders instead, which, mind you, is highly illegal, and I can just imagine the level of kickbacks in such deals. This government seems to think that they can treat everyone like refuse as long as they pay people money to shut up.
Another prime contender for arrogance is Minister Helena Dalli who now seems to think that she can dictate what people say about their sexuality on TV and what is reported by the media! The fact that an individual who spoke about his personal religious conversion experience which made him more aware what God was calling him to do, seems to sit badly with the cardboard template conceptions that Helena Dalli has about our sexuality. Nobody is allowed to think or feel differently at all or one might get one of her mouthfuls and lessons in what is right or wrong sexually!
Another episode of arrogance with the same minister occurred when she corrected a priest about something he said regarding sex and contraception on the media. Again, short of Minister Dalli being elected Pope or ‘Popesse’, she has no right to correct a priest for something he said which is a faithful representation of a teaching of the Church he represents. Everybody is conscious of the Church’s position on contraceptives and the contraceptive mentality. Although the teaching is not prescriptive, but open to individual circumstances, it is what the Catholic Church actually teaches as part of its Magisterium. In fact, the monk concerned was talking about the contraceptive mentality of young people who go out with contraceptives in their pocket which is a real issue of predisposition to the wrong type of irresponsible sex.
Now this issue of contraceptive mentality is not only a religious issue but also a public health one. Those of us who teach medical subjects, especially public health, know that what we teach is a responsible approach to sex. We teach people that in their informal sexual relations with others, they should first try to abstain from sex and if this is not possible or difficult, to be careful who to have sex with and in the final analysis only, to use condoms or contraceptives if the sexual act is actually accomplished. This is called the ABC of safe sex in public health manuals, or would she rather be a proponent of unsafe sexual encounters in which case she undoes much of work done by her colleague at the Minister of Health’s department? I would not want to think that she is encouraging the spread of infectious diseases in Malta or she would not be worthy of her ministerial post. She might want to come and sit in our clinics and have a look at the type of notorious diseases her nonchalant attitude gives rise to. Some are terminal in character.
As the second five years of this Labour government are ticking away, people are beginning to get disgusted themselves by the behaviour of their elected executive. This government is now showing the same arrogant complacency shown during the second term of the Mintoff government, which term did not end so well for the Labour Party in 1981. Hopefully, the government’s executive members will correct their behaviour; but better still, if they do not people should correct their behaviour. We are not eternal fools, neither are they entitled to our permanent adulation, respect and ultimately, our vote.
[email protected]