Single dad, dates a journalist… Busuttil’s private life gets an airing in political interview

The Opposition leader dates Times journalist Kristina Chetcuti. He is a single dad. These open secrets, and other political talk, were served to the television audience by Simon Busuttil on Net TV’s Iswed Fuq l-Abjad, which saw the PN leader again pronounce disagreement on the proposed postponement of local council elections to 2019.

“More than just my favourite journalist,” Busuttil said of his partner, referring to his ALS ice bucket challenge nomination which he posted on Facebook. But he stopped short from elaborating on this one sentence, preferring to commit his partner to the record and only that. He also revealed that one of his two boys does not live with him in Malta, but with his mother in Brussels where the former MEP spent ten years before taking the helm of the PN. “Separation helped me understand the realities of families who split up, and it has helped me grow. I look towards the future now, and I am lucky to have these two kids in my life,” he said in a candid moment in his interview with Frank Psaila.

Beyond his personal life, Busuttil reaffirmed his opposition to the postponement of local council elections, perhaps one of the more pressing – if hidden – issues affecting democratic life.

Joseph Muscat wants council elections to be held every five years, but postponing the forthcoming polls in 2015 is also being interpreted by critics as a way of dead-legging an abrogative referendum against spring hunting, affecting a key voter demographic for him.

“Why are the council elections being postponed? Muscat says they are expensive, but paying Sai Mizzi Liang her salary is OK,” he said of the wife of energy minister Konrad Mizzi, appointed trade envoy to Hong Kong in March 2013.

“Even the spring hunting referendum costs money, but that has to be held anyway. And who gets to decide if the electorate is politically fatigued? It’s voters who decide whether to vote or not.

“We cannot agree with postponing the elections on principle. The 2015 and 2017 elections, which are already set, must be held. If the elections thereafter are to be merged, then we can talk. If Muscat wants to postpone these elections, it shows he doesn’t appreciate the principle of democracy.”

Busuttil also complained of a growing sense of clientelism in the country, saying his party wanted to see ministers serving citizens because it was their right, and not as a favour.

“Today people are still dependent on politicians. To me politics is about being served by an efficient structure… a public administration that is not politicized and turned into some Labour band club.

“Our past mistake was that we were not efficient enough. We changed a country from a time where having a television licence had to be blessed by a government minister. Today’s clientelism is being masked as government’s way of ‘being close to the people’. Rights, not favours, is a slogan that is still relevant today.”

He insisted that a majority of the public was law-abiding and wished to see their rights respected by a “system that actually chases people to claim their rights.”

“I don’t just say ‘Malta For All’ and do the opposite,” Busuttil said, laying into Muscat’s ‘Taghna Lkoll’ slogan. “I truly believe that Malta is for all, and I don’t want to see political shenanigans like the employment of Sai Mizzi Liang, or claim to believe in transparency and then the Henley and power station contracts remain under wraps.”

Busuttil also said that the Nationalist Party’s MEPs will be voting for Karmenu Vella’s appointment as commissioner, even though he reiterated disappointment at not being consulted over the nomination.