What is Tourism Minister Francis Zammit Dimech going to do now? How on earth does he expect to get a new board appointed to the Malta Tourism Authority after yesterday’s mass resignation?

In a cleverly worded press release, the Department of Information yesterday said that Dr Zammit Dimech had accepted the resignation of the entire board after an investigation to identify leaks which, according to Dr Zammit Dimech, have harmed the MTA.

Well one would have to say that the MTA has caused itself a lot of harm over the years, particularly the last few. Many people have actually wondered what value the MTA has to Malta’s tourism product. In essence, going on recent performance, it seems to be more of a hindrance and a waste of money.

So back to the issue at stake. The new MTA chairman’s first problem arose when he suggested reducing the monthly remuneration given to the MTA’s branding expert. The email he sent to the board members soon became fodder for certain sections of the press.

Exasperated, which probably best sums up the chairman’s feelings at the time, he set out to find who had leaked the email and, days later, other board meeting details.

Taking the bull by the horn, he appointed a lawyer to conduct an internal investigation into where these leaks were coming from.

But the chairman decided that was the best course of action – shore up the leak – wheedle out the mole/s and have them replaced.

So what has happened since? As soon as there was news of this leak, all the media were in turn told of the new developments, so there was clearly some form of agenda to get back at either the minister, or the MTA or the new chairman. But on the other hand, we have to consider the fact that the whole board decided to resign over the issue. There could be two interpretations. The Ministry worded their statement as follows: “The MTA board members offered their resignation following the recent divulging of information to the press”. This makes it sound as if they had accepted collective responsibility for the leak and that they were doing the honourable thing. On the other hand, and what is perhaps the real story, is that the board members were asked to sign affidavits and simply thought “to hell with this”.

The truth will come out eventually, but we will have to wait for some time while the storm dies down. What needs to be looked into now is how we are going to turn around the situation at the MTA, because it is in a mess. No matter what anyone says, it has been floundering and now it will be even worse. The first thing to be done is to find replacements, and perhaps technocrats should be put in place to run the MTA. People who know the industry might not know how to run an authority and that seems to be the case. If one had to look at a perfect example of a successful technocrat board – it is that of Mepa. We are not saying that they do everything correctly, but the board understands what is expected of it and in turn gets things in its own house done and done efficiently. This is what is needed at the MTA, but with one difference. The Minister seems to override too many decisions and not allow the board to get on with it. Time will tell, we shall see. But without jumping the gun, the ministry must get a board appointed pretty smartly.