David Xuereb, MCESD Chair, stood on the stairs of Castille after meeting Prime Minister Robert Abela and Minister Miriam Dalli. The country had just been plunged into days of darkness as the electrical grid failed catastrophically. That meeting was called by the Chamber of Commerce which lambasted government for leaving businesses and the public in paralysis. But David Xuereb looked pretty cheerful. “We came out rather happy,” he announced to the nation’s shock.
So what happened in that meeting to make Xuereb so gleeful? Robert Abela promised he’d finally “accelerate” investment in the power grid. He pledged €30 million euro annually instead of the €15 million he’d been spending until now. To put that into context Silvio Schembri is paying €31 million of our taxes to rent a bathroom showroom, mostly still in shellform, to be used as offices by the Malta Business Registry. Those offices have to be exceptional because the Minister’s wife works there. Silvio Schembri promoted her from a desk officer to senior legal officer at the MBR. For further perspective government will be spending €700 million on its Project Green, a thin excuse to funnel more money into the pockets of Labour’s own deputy leader while ostensibly creating “urban green spaces”. Yet David Xuereb is elated with Abela’s crumbs.
“It was a long meeting… MCESD partners presented their views most of which were well researched in the spirit of support and proactive suggestions that does out country proud”. Xuereb was on a mission. His objective was damage limitation for Abela’s government. He made it a point to emphasise that all the country’s problems were due to climate change - just what Abela wanted the nation to believe. Nothing to do with Abela’s bad planning, poor investment, and poorer governance.
Xuereb conveniently buried the “serious concerns” expressed by the Chamber of Commerce. For Xuereb, it’s all fine, because Abela’s promised an extra 15 million.
The Chamber requested that meeting. It lambasted “the lack of foresight, poor planning, lack of transparency and weak enforcement”. The time for “patched-up, short-term quick fixes” is over, the Chamber warned. Clearly David Xuereb wasn’t listening. He’s “happy” with Abela’s mere pledge of more “quick-fixes”.
The Chamber declared itself “very worried”. “This goes beyond the power cuts - there is an urgent need to discuss the way that crucial issues impacting the nation as a whole are being handled,” it lamented. “The current state of play cannot persist and worst of all repeat itself - the right decisions and timely investment need to be taken now. This country needs to have a long-term economic and social vision that goes beyond the political spectrum”, it insisted. Alas, the MCESD Chair had tuned out.
The Chamber was absolutely right: “The country is in a nose-dive and we persist in denial… It is time to stop trying to please everyone and prioritise the long term national interest over immediate partisan interests”.
“The country’s leadership needs to step up and take the right decisions with the required urgency, however tough these decisions”. Sadly the country’s led by Robert Abela. When has he ever stepped up or taken the right decisions? Abela is the champion of procrastination.
Abela never had any inclination or aptitude to take tough decisions. He always takes the easy way out. And Xuereb’s willful feebleness won’t help. He deftly defused the Chamber’s denunciations.
Xuereb’s pliability is highly suspect. Is it because Labour made him Chairman of the Occupational health and Safety Authority, the very institution meant to protect workers from being killed under the rubble at construction sites? The same Xuereb also offers consultancy work in the private sector. In February 2023, Labour’s Planning Ministry was defending Xuereb. “It is the ministry’s opinion that there are no circumstances that suggest a conflict of interest or incompatibility between the public role of Perit David Xuereb and his consultancy work in the private sector”. Xuereb owes Labour big-time.
As Xuereb stood timidly on Castille’s steps eulogising Abela’s half-hearted pledges, he was surrounded by a gaggle of other parasites, backing him. They included Josef Bugeja, Paul Pace and Josef Vella.
Josef Bugeja, GWU secretary general, is making tens of thousands of euro as director of District Operations Ltd, the company subcontracted by his own GWU to run the government’s jobless scheme. That deal was worth 109 million euro, of which 1.2 million were diverted into vague “administrative expenses” and tens of thousands in directors’ fees.
Paul Pace went silent after getting a health ministry consultancy post. The Ministry refused to divulge his remuneration for the post of “advisor”, simply stating “his remuneration is comparable to that of other health advisors”. After returning to MUMN as president and raising hell over nurses’ pathetic working conditions, he’s gone quiet again. Manuel Cuschieri threatened him with exposing more details of his alleged false claims for overtime payment while holidaying in Egypt.
Depressingly even Josef Vella, the UHM’s secretary general is on the take having accepted a directorship on the government’s Malta Air Travel Company Ltd.
But there is hope yet. Farsons CEO Norman Aquilina tore David Xuereb and his MCESD to shreds. The agenda for the urgent MCESD meeting “ended up being treated like an a la carte menu by the host,” he accused. “The satisfaction expressed”, he added left “a lot to be desired”.
He challenged the MCESD to “stand up for what is right” and rise “well above any political debate or pressure”. “We need less talking and more walking”, he mocked. He derided the MCESD for acting “more like a spectator” than “a guiding protagonist during a telling moment”.
At last, somebody who won’t be bought, won’t be silenced. Somebody with the dignity and self-respect to call a spade a spade. “I cannot but feel disillusioned with the MCESD”, he lamented. That’s putting it mildly. It’s nauseating disgust that most feel at the sight of that bunch of grovellers licking the hand that feeds them.