The Prime Minister has tried to wriggle and wiggle his way out of bringing to book the thousand plus consumers who had their smart meters rigged by paying bribes, saying that that was the only option he had for catching the big fish. 

You’re at your old shell game again, Prime Minister. You’re playing the Maltese people for the suckers you played them for this time last year. 

How can the consumers who had their meters doctored help you nab the scam’s masterminds? The consumers were on the outside looking in. The inner circle was made up of Enemalta’s technicians who made the proposal, in the first place, to have the meters tampered with.

No mastermind worth one’s guile would own up to a consumer that he – or she – was the brains behind it all. That would be like a drug baron on some street corner plying his trade. 

Besides, the likelihood is that the consumer didn’t care who the mastermind was as long as he paid only one-fifth of the actual consumption.

As if you didn’t know, Mr Prime Minister, it’s the technicians themselves who can, and probably will, sing. But first you have to sing from their hymn sheet.

Make the right proposal to them, a give-take-and-take proposal on the lines they made to those thousand plus consumers.

Make them an offer they will find very hard to refuse. Most of Malta will swear that you’ll never be at a loss for one. They’ll turn stoolie and their singing will put any highly-prized canary to shame and the big fish in the net.

It just doesn’t add up why you should let those who gave the backhanders off the hook.

It is official that there are some 200 commercial addresses involved in the scam. For each rigged business meter, one can reasonably assume there is a residential address belonging to that business owner with an equally-rigged meter.

So, leaving out a second residence that a successful businessman would normally have, that means that at least 400 doctored smart meters were on premises that belonged to members of the business community.

The next time I push the trolley down the aisle of a supermarket, book a room in a hotel or pass by a factory, my gnawing suspicion will be: is this one of the 200? For by not making public those that bribed, the rest of the business community, because of these 200, will be tarnished by the same brush.

Most government employees, not just in Malta, are looked upon, by a class of people with deep pockets, as easy prey. In their eyes, a government employee is up for sale. A mere underling who may have been slighted and is justifiably disgruntled. An underling who, on looking up at his superiors, can barely see them for the sleaze they are awash in. They know that he knows what they do (and make) on the side, and he knows that they know that he knows. 

And what’s the bet that most of those 1000 plus know this too?

For these people, most government employees are either on the take, on the make or on both.

You’re hunting down the calloused worker to save the hide of the crooked well-heeled for whom graft is an article of faith. The Worker’s Party hunting down the calloused worker! If Dr. Boffa had a second coming, he’d return to his resting place like a shot on learning what his legacy has turned into.

No, Prime Minister, your way is not the way to reel in the big fish. You can try pulling the bull over our eyes, and you can keep those of us who swallow it crook, lie and stinker.

Ever since you and your band of merry men swaggered up the steps of Castile, all of you have exhibited an innate ability to stand reason on its head.

Your unfulfilled wish was to be Malta’s youngest Prime Minister. Stay the course you’ve chosen and you will be the strongest contender yet for l-izghar Prim Ministru that Malta has ever had.

Joe Genovese

Birkirkara