There have been at least three major heists of public and state property in the recent past and people, in their numbers, are now at long last finally starting to wake up and realise what, exactly has happened.

We are referring to the unholy trinity of deals struck by this current Socialist government to sell off state assets in return for business models that appear to make very little sense at all and, at least in the case of two of them, are already turning out to be abject failures: the public hospitals deal, the American University of Malta and the Delimara power station.

As for the first two we have already seen several tens of millions of euros being flushed down the toilette as far as the hospitals are concerned and we have seen the handing over of historic land in the Three Cities and virgin sea-view land in Marsascala for a so-called university.

The third deal in question is that gas-fired power station in Delimara, but more of that a little further down.

But when it comes to the three state hospitals - St Luke’s, Karen Grech and Gozo General Hospitals – and the AUM deals, not only were these as shady as the dark side of the moon but, for all the hyped-up sales talk we were treated to back at  their inceptions, are performing miserably.

As for the hospitals, the country’s doctors this week called on the government to cut its losses on a privatisation deal that has clearly gone bad  They say that millions are still being squandered on the deal and that such funds should be far better spent on equipment and services, one should listen.

Every year we are pumping tens of millions of euros into the operations of the three state hospitals being privately run by the American Steward Healthcare – the company that took over in the wake of the Vitals Global Healthcare debacle that has been steeped in so many corruption allegations that the mind boggles.

This money is simply going down the drain, rather than going into the better quality healthcare doctors feel they would be able to deliver to the Maltese public.  But not only that, commitments on projects are not being met either with the promised state-of-the-art newly refurbished St Luke’s, Karen Grech and Gozo General Hospitals are still far behind schedule and are a long, long way off.  This week they demanded that the government ‘stops the bleeding’ that is the €1.5 billion deal, we could not agree more.  Perhaps, not too strangely it seems the government has ignored their pleas and has not even dignified them with a response.

As for the fabled American University of Malta, where one fails to find anything ‘American’ about it, this, too, is far from yielding the promised results.  The institution has only reached 20 per cent of its student body target and, incredibly, it wants to expand further still into its historic surroundings with an atrocity of an expansion...and for what purpose?  Time will tell.  People are now taking to the streets to demand that property back, just as the doctors are demanding we take but our hospitals from the private sector.

And as for the third deal, the Delimara power station, the chickens will come home to roost sooner rather than later because, lest we forget, we will be bound as a country to purchase electricity at a set price for some 18 years, irrespective of what happens to the international price of gas over that same time frame.

Those, however, are pleasures yet to come but something tells us that such deals are never struck in the interest of the end consumer and something else tells us that it will be the end consumer that gets the short end of that particular stick when a chicken roosts on it.  And it may only be a matter of time until people cop on and start demanding their electricity supply back as well.

It has become more than evident that, in designing these deals, some of which appear designed to fail while others appear designed for simple short- and long-term gain, someone acting on our behalf, on the behalf of the people, was either very competent or incredibly incompetent. 

Time, in this matter as in all things, will tell.