The flavour of the week undoubtedly was Roderick Galdes, chosen by Robert Abela to help people get affordable housing, who turned out to have purchased a duplex penthouse in Ta' Gelmus, Rabat Gozo for a puny €140,000, possibly because friends in high places enabled him to book the property when it was only on plan.

The media barrage on hapless Galdes then discovered he has been accumulating properties not just in Malta but also abroad ever since he, the former mayor of Qormi, was elected to Parliament.

It reminded people of what his fellow MP from Qormi, Rosianne Cutajar, memorably said, that 'everybody is pigging out'.

The Nationalist Party was quick to demand Galdes's resignation while others pointed out that the refusal by PM Abela to continue with the system that forces ministers to declare their financial worth helps ministers and others hide increases in their wealth while in office. 

This issue brought out the usual envious laptop warriors who however could not wash away the 'everybody's doing it' mantra.

Enter (or rather re-enter) Edwin Vassallo, former shopkeeper in Mosta, former parliamentary secretary who failed in his task to re-create the Ta' Qali Crafts Village and then left the party to campaign in the European Parliament election.

Now re-emerging as the champion of the Far Right, (anti-divorce and anti-abortion, gays and LGBTQ) he has been thundering against 'over-population' and was given exposure on the very media he accused of being in Abela's pay.

Then he self-invited himself to the party's HQ and offered to help new leader Alex Borg.

So far, Borg has not reacted to this offer but now he must surely factor in the cost of including this political dodo in the line-up at the next election.

But the main item in what must be the real debate in the country is far away from Vassallo's rants.

It's called affordability and it has been very effective in cutting down Trump's margins everywhere - New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, etc. Trump's popularity is heading south.

Affordability is a very simple concept which can be quickly learnt and checked on the kitchen table of every house.

Take for instance housing. The most recent statistics say house prices in Malta were estimated at €370,000 on average last year for a one-bedroom flat and have risen by 10% in one year while wages have only increased by €36 per month in the same period. 

That's why they have become unaffordable, not because of foreigners, while Galdes, tasked to make them affordable, has been amassing his own properties.

Abela too tried to tackle the cost of living problem but he relied on Minister Silvio Schembri who came up with a scheme (Stable Food Prices Initiative) that didn't work and was quietly buried.

The measure that seems to have worked was the one that locked energy prices, but ironically this is the measure that the EU is reported to be seeking its withdrawal. 

Since then Abela has had an easy ride because a couple of bad polls scared off Bernard Grech and led to the election of Alex Borg who seems more at home welcoming boisterous new graduates than engaging in kitchen table serious discussions with families at their wits' end with rising prices, pensioners finding they're poor and young people giving up on Malta.

History note 

Archbishop Gonzi's participation in the British withdrawal from Malta 

Sergio Grech

Melita Historica 2024

Archbishop Gonzi claimed that he was one of the first to learn that the new Mintoff government intended to sack Sir Maurice Dorman, the governor.

Later he told Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the British Foreign Secretary he still rued the day that Malta was granted independence.

But when in March 1972 the talks with Britain risked faltering, the 85-year-old Archbishop, with Mintoff's and Pope Paul VI's approval, travelled to London to plead Malta's cause with Prime Minister Edward Heath.

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