Mr Joe Martinelli (TMID, 23 May) has once again come out of the cold, from hundreds of miles away, to comment on the reality of Malta’s social welfare situation. If Mr Martinelli had been a local resident, he would have perhaps taken off his rose-tinted glasses to discern better Malta’s desperate financial scenario. And naturally, Mr Martinelli attributes “my observation” as a figment of my imagination, or better still as a “perception” – as the PN has made him and his like believe.

As to the time and distance from where I witnessed this tragic incident, it’s not important. To stop the man and offer him a slice of pizza is to embarrass him. And since one is not familiar with his temperament – considering this situation – one would never know the outcome. Secondly, I don’t have to tell Mr Martinelli or sundry what I offered this man. The charity I give is something between me and the Maker.

For the rest of the letter, Mr Martinelli could not comment more about this sorry incident, which seems to have disturbed him considerably, and had the gull to accuse me of a hidden agenda. No, Mr Martinelli, there is no hidden agenda. But as I told you before, Malta’s near-bankruptcy is a reality. So, here again, I will refresh your memory of the misgovernance of the PN in power, or better still of a country run by an oligarchy as one of the Prime Minister’s parliamentarians accused him of.

With the creation of “GonziPN” our democracy has become a near-dictatorship, by ignoring parliament on various occasions, the very recent one is the PfP case which is now being discussed in the European and Foreign Affairs Committee. Or the direct orders worth thousands of euros to blue-eyed boys without calling for tenders. There are other occasions when parliament was thus reduced to a band club affair. By reading biased papers, Mr Martinelli, you do not have a sane picture of the sorry state Malta has become under the PN administration. So I dare you Mr Martinelli, come and live here once again and bear witness to the miserable state your God-sent PN has reduced Malta to in half a century of his misgovernance.

The slogan money no problem has become a very acute reality. As in 1971, this oligarchy will leave the PL – hopefully our next government – a threatening debt of over 6 billion euro. What a difference to the situation with the PL in government, which in 1987 left a total of more that 470 million Malta Pounds, and not euro, in the coffers. Beside the gold reserves that this government had to reduce for one reason or another. Poverty and beggars were eliminated, and at the same time the PL in government created a middle class which the PN in government nearly liquidated.

I wish I had more space to describe the sorry state we locals are living in, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Why don’t you came and live here?

■ Louis Fenech

L-Iklin