Rebekah Borg is the Opposition’s spokesperson for the Lands Authority. She’s a PN MP. But you’d think she was Labour, listening to her car-crash interview with Andrew Azzopardi (https://youtube.com/live/ZwSWlAdagJI?feature=share). She cut a depressing figure. Entirely unprepared, she spent the entire interview spewing inanities, defending Joseph Muscat and praising Labour.
She couldn’t even name the law under which she’s appointed Opposition representative on the Lands Authority Board. She appeared baffled when asked what happens at the Board’s meetings. “There are certain….emm…emm… for example redemptions of ground rent,” she muttered.
She was unable to come up with a single Opposition proposal in the area she shadows.
The MP gave the impression she has absolutely no clue. She embarrassed her party and herself. This was an exercise in mediocrity. She admitted publicly that “politics barely interested me, to tell you the truth - I was quite distanced from politics”. “When I told people I was getting into politics they thought, she doesn’t even follow politics,” she confided. And boy, did it show.
“Why is the PN in a deep hole?”, was Andrew Azzopardi’s first question. “I believe that if we continue going as we are, and we also make more…mmm….mmm… not just criticise, but we show that we are truly a government, that we can be a government that can be…mmmm…that leads the country well, within 4 years, in the way we’re going we will get there,” she stuttered, totally unconvincing. It might have been stage fright. One hoped she’d settle down as the interview progressed. She didn’t. Things only got worse.
“Do you believe in Bernard Grech?” “Yes……Yes……….he is our leader… he is a leader who….mmm…..mmmm….leads us”, she plodded. How utterly pathetic. If she’s so totally uninspired by her leader, how can she sell him to the rest? Is that all she can say about Grech - that ‘he leads us’? That is reason enough for her leader to send her packing.
“The people out there, while critisicing is good and important, they also need to see…mmm….mmm…we, what do we mean, what do we signify, and that we are starting to do….obviously it takes time….mmm….mmm….when you build, I don’t want to call them proposals, more a vision. The vision takes time,” she bungled. She was completely incoherent in her mish mash of English-Maltese.
“In the last year, I can tell you, both for myself, my colleagues and the whole party, we are using the time to build a new vision - one of them…..mmm…..mmm… that we saw recently is the fundamental right to a better environment,” she explained.
“What are you going to fix in the environment?”, Azzopardi asked. “For example, one of the problems that I see in the environment with regard to building is aesthetics,” she declared. Aesthetics? Is that the biggest problem in the country’s environment? “This is the problem today, how development is being done… but there is nothing wrong with development, balance is important”.
“I cannot tell you we should do this, this and that… because I don’t want to make the same mistake as Labour who change a bit here and a bit there….you cannot say for example, we need to do this…mmmm…. we need planning, we need a review of everything, from aesthetics, to planning policies, to ..mmm… how certain work is done on site,” she rambled. “We can’t pinpoint, let’s change this or the other, no - we need a complete overhaul”. Yet she couldn’t name a single thing needing change.
“What is your biggest worry about Lands?”, Azzopardi asked. This was her chance to shine. This is her brief. “I cannot understand why when you go to Lands you enter an alley that keeps on going,” she replied, “so many people speak to me on a daily basis that.. I don’t know what to tell them. They have a right to file an application, what happened to their application? Boqq”,she meandered. “To me that is the most important thing,” she concluded. What thing? What issue? This was just disjointed rubbish.
“Do you have any plans?”, Azzopardi asked. “Yes, I’m working on them, with the party, as a spokesperson, and hopefully in the coming…let me say months…depending on, on how much we progress, especially - and this is the only thing I’m going to say because we’re still working on them … transparency”. That is what Borg could come up with - transparency. No wonder people despair.
“In this legislature, there is no corruption,” Andrew Azzopardi provoked. That was a softball for the MP. She should have nailed it. Instead, she blew it. “We are still hearing about lots of things, for example, we are hearing….mmm…I don’t know…mmm… what’s happening in the PAC….mmm….mmm.. a number of stakeholders in Electrogas who don’t know what’s going on.”
Does the Honorable Borg bother to prepare herself before an interview? Didn’t she even bother looking at the detailed investigative work done by journalists exposing Robert Abela’s corrupt practices, his abusive appointments of Minister’s wives and girlfriends, the issuing of permits against the advice of case officers, the shameful allocation of public land to their party donors and the millions squandered in direct orders to his friends? Which planet is Borg on?
“Is Joseph Muscat’s place in prison?”, Azzopardi asked her. “That I leave in the hands of whoever is conducting investigations, that is not the……..people say a lot of things, you hear a lot of things, that is not..mmm..mmm…something I can say myself. When an investigation is done, that is in the hands of the police at the end of the day… It is not my ..mmm….remit to judge”.
The MP has no opinion about Joseph Muscat. That’s bad enough, but she hasn’t even bothered to read what the NAO concluded about him. She could have at least quoted the NAO’s judgements on Muscat. She could have referred to the detailed reports published by courageous journalists about Muscat’s murky deals. Not a single word. It’s not her remit to judge. Should we laugh or weep?
The woman has no insight. She proudly uploaded the whole catastrophic interview on her Facebook page.
We might not expect brilliance, but mere basic competence?