Do the English have a monopoly on shooting themselves in the foot? Of course not. Konrad Mizzi turned up to a ‘Listening Government’ meeting yesterday and received a standing ovation – described by one newspaper as “a hero’s welcome” – as he entered. It was supposed to be a public dialogue meeting, in which members of the public challenge the government with questions, and receive answers, about the topic of the meeting. But it seems to have been deliberately stuffed full of rabid and lobotomised party supporters who think it is all right for Cabinet ministers in charge of major contracts to set up secret companies in Panama, and who had been fully briefed to stand up, clap and cheer when the man walked in.

So far, so far right – this is the kind of thing we saw, historically, in totalitarian states where shows of popular support were used to strip society of the last remaining shreds of democracy. We have seen it twice recently here in Malta: a similar rousing show of support, with mad applause and people jumping about and shrieking, when Manuel Mallia entered a marquee in Valletta at the height of the shoot-out scandal, and then again with Michael Falzon in the thick of the Gaffarena corruption story during some kind of Labour Party event at an old theatre in Gzira. But the meeting at which Konrad Mizzi was given his ego-boosting standing ovation was a government meeting, and not a Labour Party meeting, which only served to make the spectacle even more shameful than it would otherwise have been.

To make matters worse, the topics of the meeting were the government’s activities in health and energy, the two portfolios of which Konrad Mizzi was supposed to have been stripped several weeks ago after the Prime Minister had spent a couple of months in faux-agonising deliberation over what to do about him. Muscat ‘stripped’ Mizzi of those portfolios and left him exactly where he was, doing what he had been doing all along: in the Prime Minister’s Office, where Mizzi had been installed from Day One, looking after energy while Chris Fearne supposedly looks after health as Mizzi pulls the strings on major deals.

And yet there Mizzi was, at the Listening Government meeting, taking questions about the portfolios of which the Prime Minister said he had stripped him. This has been a series of never-ending insults to the public – and the public were not represented by the clapping, cheering fools in the audience, who are happy to be whipped and cheated as long as it is their beloved party whipping and cheating them. The public is out here, and mightily annoyed.

Do you remember that “international audit” of his favourite minister’s financial affairs that the Prime Minister bluffed about back when the Panama story broke in the winter? Of course you do – he repeated that false promise so many times that he shoved his own back up against the wall with no need for the press to do it for him. Where is that “international audit” now? Where it has been all along: jumbled up in that great, big basket of lies we have been told for years, since the days when Muscat’s party was in Opposition, and which have gone into overdrive ever since. Crazily, lots of people seem to accept that they have been lied to on the matter of the “international audit” and think it acceptable, if not ideal, that the Prime Minister and his chief henchman should have used this particular lie to get themselves out of the mess. This is probably because they themselves lie to get out of messes and project themselves into that situation. But nobody gives a damn if Mister X lies to Mister Z: it’s between them and those around them. But when the Prime Minister lies repeatedly and baldly to the people he governs and to journalists asking questions on those people’s behalf, then this is really very serious. It’s amazing that we even need to stop and think about it.

Journalists present at the Listening Government meeting were far more interested in asking Konrad Mizzi questions about the Panama corruption scandal than they were about his messes with the power station or the hospitals – and who can blame them. It’s the first time Mizzi has faced the press in months without actually being doorstepped as he entered or left a building. His response to those journalists was an extremely rude, arrogant and ill-advised “Today was about the Listening Government. I will only answer questions about the Listening Government” (translated from Maltese).

This may or may not be a listening government, but one thing is certain: it is the most offensive government Malta has had since 1987. Even the awful and disastrous Alfred Sant was not as gratuitously offensive as these characters, and he certainly wasn’t corrupt and shady.

Incidentally, Mrs Konrad Mizzi – our elusive consul in Shanghai – is in Malta at the moment. She was out yachting with her husband and a bunch of other people yesterday afternoon. I’d say it’s time to get hold of her and ask her a few pertinent questions. After all, she too – as a government envoy – is a politically exposed person in her own right and not just as an adjunct of her husband, and she is as involved in that shady Panama/New Zealand operation as he is.

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