Five days after taking part in an event organised by this publishing house to announce the signing of what he described as “groundbreaking” memorandum of understanding with China, the Prime Minister is off to Beijing – but The Malta Independent is not among the selected few media accompanying him.
It is the second time that Dr Joseph Muscat has been in China since becoming Prime Minister, and for the second time this media house has not been invited to send a representative. Last year, PBS and The Times had gone. This time, Malta Today is with PBS and The Times, which means that The Malta Independent is the only English newspaper not to be represented.
Efforts to make contact with the Office of the Prime Minister during the past five days to ask about the possibility of this publishing house accompanying the PM were all in vain. Emails sent to and calls made to OPM Communications Chief Kurt Farrugia were unreturned and unanswered.
This discrimination among the ‘independent’ media raises questions on what the government agenda is.
The PM announced the signing of the MOU during a business breakfast organised by The Malta Business Weekly last Thursday, and since then the government received both praise and criticism, with some saying this is the way forward as the Asian nation is fast becoming the country everyone is looking up to, while others complained Malta is fast becoming a “Chinese colony”.
The MOU covers several sectors including aviation, health, energy, finance, education, tourism, culture and sport.
Last month, for the first time in many years, no media were invited by the government to attend the EU summit except for PBS and DOI. The absence of independent journalists (including The Malta Independent) had a wrong statement made by the PM - that the June summit was the first occasion that the concept of responsibility sharing in terms of irregular migration – remaining unchallenged until this newsroom highlighted the matter the next day.
On Monday, government MP Marlene Farrugia, writing on The Malta Independent, was very critical of the agreement to be reached with China.
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