|
The rumpus over the infamous words uttered by investments minister Austin Gatt led a select few in the media to raise their concern with Gatt’s not-very-minor transgression. Dr Gatt argued, somewhat flippantly, that he did feel the need to drag the issue of Maltacom’s property transfer into parliament and get the vote on it, since the government enjoyed a five-seat majority, so what the heck?
And it did not stop here. The Labour leader has now called for Gatt’s resignation.
It is more than obvious that Gatt will not resign. If he did, we would all be very surprised at such humility and remorse, but more importantly (and perhaps this is far more important) the government would end up much like a limping duck. And that’s because Gatt may be brusque but he is certainly not incompetent, indecisive or without drive.
And the same cannot be said for all his colleagues. Since John Dalli’s departure from Cabinet and Lawrence Gonzi’s glee at not having him back, Gatt has served as the Cabinet’s Mr Fix-It. His accomplishments are more conspicuous because of Eddie Fenech Adami’s departure from the post of PM and the disappearance of Josef Bonnici, a minister remembered by all for his dainty ways about reform.
Since being in office, Gatt has achieved more than a normal Maltese minister has managed to accomplish in a political lifetime.
The reform at Air Malta, despite the sour taste that came with it, has led the airline to improve its core bottom line by Lm3 million. The shipyards are down to Lm9 million losses in 2005 from Lm23 million in 2003. The Water Services Corporation’s government subsidy has been halved from Lm10 million to Lm5.3 million. And when it gets off the ground, he will be the minister to have attracted one of the biggest investments ever to grace Malta, namely SmartCity@Malta.
And that’s because the one important thing Austin Gatt has that other politicians lack, is vision.
We would all agree that a nice set of brakes would do him great favours, but with a Cabinet that would find more allure in some Dunlopillo advert, Gatt gives the ministerial line-up some life.
His idea to reform Enemalta has been confused with his silly equation on the surcharge hike. His privatisation projects are at times too messy, but his idea of setting deadlines and respecting them is like a fresh northerly wind in our torrid summer heat.
And privatisation is like heart surgery – to get to the heart you have to cut through muscle and bone. Gatt has the stamina to endure the pain. The other ministers cannot even handle a Super One reporter, let alone a scalpel.
Gatt’s actions have not always been salutary, a case in point where the PBS reforms which were carried out with the fiscal motive in mind, and not the national public broadcasting obligations, resulted in the demise of public broadcasting as we know it: cheap, bland, and dull.
When it comes to delicate subjects, Gatt lacks the finesse in handling his affairs without the clumsy tentacles of his Thatcherite reforms.
In the information technology revolution, Gatt has made wonders that even his political adversaries admire. And his basic understanding and drive to divest government of its recurrent expenditure by privatising more and more, makes damn good economic sense.
Which is why at the very end of the day Lawrence Gonzi should seriously think of propping up his leadership with some real politicians who can take decisions and take the flak for their cock-ups, and not prima donnas who would be better off singing in a choir.
Unfortunately for him and his party, the PM does not really sense the dissatisfaction with his government. It is true, there have been improvements but they are clouded by the invisible deliverables. Gonzi thinks that just by launching a CHOGM road with numerous lampposts, and high walls that block the panorama and vista, people will warm up to him.
Little does he know that the thing that concerns people are the bills they pay at the end of the month.
Austin Gatt would be a fine choice for deputy Prime Minister.
But then again the PM gives the impression that he is scared of bringing lions into his den.
Bertu Mizzi’s lawyer has written asking me to furnish one of Malta’s better known millionaires with the address of a person who wrote a letter about the Santa Marija estate and Bertu Mizzi in this newspaper.
I have not replied to his lawyer thinking that perhaps I should tell him that this is the year 2006, not 1976. Bertu’s lawyer said that if I did not provide him with the address of the person who wrote the letter he would proceed against me solely, instead of against both the person writing the letter and myself.
Now how is that for choice?
You should know that Bertu Mizzi has just won Lm100 in libel damages against me because of an opinion article penned by Dr Harry Vassallo. The issue was over Dr Vassallo’s comment in which he thought that Bertu Mizzi was an agent for Boeing – according to an interview he had given to Godfrey Grima.
It transpires that Bertu Mizzi is not an agent for Boeing, though this was not the point of the opinion piece. In that article, Harry Vassallo had other things to say about Mr Mizzi which he did not care to sue either Vassallo or myself for libel.
Let me remind the readers what Harry Vassallo had to say:
“The great contrast between his advice to government in Brussels and his practice in Malta is simply a matter of law. Belgian law does not create the madhouse he has learnt to navigate so well in Malta. Mr Mizzi can recognise an opportunity when he sees one. If landlords are obliged to leave their money in the streets, he has no problem with picking it up and showing them how well it can be invested.
“His example has been followed by his St Julian’s neighbours. I suppose this too is free advice in a way. The scion of one business family has changed the address on her identity card in order to lay a claim to the lease of her grandparent’s house. The law allows her to inherit the lease. A few doors away another branch of another major manufacturing business family has the tenancy of yet another house. The rent is controlled and much lower than the interest paid by their employees on mortgages for much humbler residences.
“It may be unfair to Mr Albert Mizzi to have his private affairs bandied about in this way. I have selected him out of the many hundreds of wealthy tenants squatting in more lavish properties and paying a pittance in rent simply because he is something of a national figure. His rarified eminence in the business world is in the greatest contrast with his tenancy of the premises referred to and is a memorable illustration of the absurdity of the present rent laws.”
I am sure that Mr Mizzi was inflamed with Vassallo’s commentary, but on this he was not in position to respond, because what Vassallo had to say about Mr Mizzi’s rental episodes was fair and correct.
The apex of Mr Mizzi’s mentality is best illustrated by this episode. During the discussions into settling this libel case, Mr Mizzi proposed that I donate Lm1,000 to Caritas. Mr Mizzi serves as a director at Caritas.
It was a proposal aimed at hitting out at my family, who give hundreds of hours of work to Caritas and who have supported Caritas, body and soul.
My answer to Bertu Mizzi’s lawyer, Henri Mizzi, is not fit to be published. But it was yet an amusing proposition from a man who owns tumoli of land, thousands of square metres of real estate, and countless export and trading companies.
Now Bertu Mizzi might think that I am in some spurious group organised to destroy him. Indeed that is not the case, though the fact that I am not should not stop me from reminding people that he was one of Mintoff’s greatest collaborators and that Fenech Adami had lampooned him at a mass meeting at one time, only to embrace him later on.
His lawyer Henri Mizzi has indicated that Mr Mizzi feels that my comments on his receiving the OBE are libellous. And of course I have clarified that my comments are subjective not objective. If anyone wants to believe that Mr Mizzi has the right to have an OBE then so be it. But I, Saviour Balzan, a citizen of the Republic of Malta would like to express my opinion that the award to Mr Mizzi by Mr Blair’s government makes me laugh and giggle. Is that a problem?
But if anyone wishes to read how seriously people in England take the awards of the OBE, why not read the stories of funds against awards by the Blairite government in the London Sunday Times?
Mr Mizzi will get his Lm100 – I have collected all my one cent and two cent pieces, which I am sure he will not mind.
I await in earnest his other libel actions and as I wait I would like to inform my long-suffering readers that I have decided to add Bertu Mizzi to my planned list of short biographies together with those of Dom Mintoff and others.
So if anyone would like to give me more food for thought about the former Mintoffian collaborator, Mr Albert Mizzi OBE, please send me your thoughts on,
bertumizziOBEbiography@mediatoday.com.mt.
For my sins I participated in last Friday’s Xarabank, sitting next to Mussolini aficionado Martin Degiorgio. It was quite surreal, noting that Degiorgio was a sponsor to the Xarabank programme through his Mondial travel agency.
If anyone disagrees with Degiorgio’s ideas and views of life there is one thing they should do and it is very simple: do not use Mondial Travel. Just like some people in Germany do not use Birkenstock sandals because the company sponsors the far right in Germany.
Xarabank was an opportunity for parliamentary secretary Tony Abela to rehabilitate himself after the horrendous events that revealed the disastrous non-reaction by the AFM when a boat of Africans drifting through Maltese waters was clearly in distress and later sank off Sicily in November last year.
It was a horrible affair sitting next to a man who heads a movement which copies its emblem from an extreme Italian fascist party, who speaks in such a way that does nothing but incite dislike for immigrants, and who mixes with the likes of people infatuated with Nazism and fascism.
In the programme, the views of ANR were clearly demonstrated by a video clip by one of their spokesmen, flanked no doubt by Martin Degiorgio dressed like any respectable Mussolini lover would dress up.
“Saviour Balzan, that Communist dirt,” he said, warning me he would wrap my own newspaper around my neck. Now how is that for incitement?
The Police of course were either sleeping or debating at length with their Commissioner John Rizzo whether to act, not act, act and not act, or sleep or not sleep.
John Rizzo was not sleeping. Instead of issuing a press release about the ANR spokesman and stating that police would be taking criminal proceedings in view of this incitement to hatred, Rizzo did one better. He issued a press statement maintaining and supporting what Kurt Guillamier, a PN activist but now a supporter of the fascist grouping led by Martin Degiorgio, had to say about an incident at the police HQ.
When the statement rolled out on our fax machine at 3pm, I phoned at once the PM’s office complaining that this police force was a farce. The police statement concluded the statement with the words that I am sure would be most appropriate in the books of laughs: “Unfortunately, comments such as these in the popular Xarabank programme create more harm than good as a result of the untruths expressed, since it also puts into bad light this serious government institution that is the Police.”
He was obviously reacting to uphold what former Nationalist mayor Kurt Guillamier, now an ANR supporter, had to say. Here we go again. John Rizzo found the time to issue a statement to support an extremist and a rightist, but not a whisper about this incitement to hatred and violence.
Just when we all thought that the police are there to protect our rights.
Jason Micallef has definitely transformed his party into something sexier and livelier. But if there is one deficiency it has to be his weak eye for detail. Confusing a Luxembourg media house with a Maltese media house simply deflated the inroads he was making with the EU’s decision to stop the media review contract it awarded to a PN subsidiary. Needless to say, the media was right to point out his faux pas and his reluctance to apologise.
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
|
