Machiavelli: The Princess

The meteoric Miriam Dalli has landed back in Malta. Without wasting a minute she was interviewed and feted.

She was asked what she thinks about Malta’s passport sale. The Individual Investor Programme (IIP) is designed to exploit European Union membership to make a quick buck. Joseph Muscat’s Malta perfected the scheme with help from Henley and Partners.

Anybody who pays gets a passport, no strings attached, gaining him rights enjoyed by EU citizens. The due-diligence process is deeply flawed and residence rules never enforced.  Everybody knows that no wealthy passport buyer resides in semi-basement flats in Mqabba.

Everybody knows that Malta betrayed its European partners by selling passports to people with no interest in Malta at all. Indeed that is the point. Malta makes the money and other countries bear the cost. Ursula von der Leyen knows it. Dalli knows it too.

But Dalli justifies Malta’s exploitative passport sale. First by stating that many others do it – as if that absolves us. And worse with the sheer fortune it has generated for the country – €800 million. A classical case of Machiavellian ends justifying the means.

Now she wants to lure the Opposition into Labour’s den of sins.  She insisted the Opposition should declare its position on passports and join a common front with Labour.

In ‘The Prince’ Machiavelli described how Cesare Borgia lured the Orsini family into meeting him at Sinigaglia by pretending not to know of their plans to overthrow him. When they arrived, Borgia had them all murdered. Like Borgia, Dalli entices the PN to slip up and destroy themselves.

Is it surprising that Malta has found little appetite among its European partners for sharing the immigration burden? If Malta can sell the common wealth of the Union by hawking passports, and make millions, it surely does not deserve any help. Malta cannot be trusted as an honest broker. If it has enough space for hundreds of wealthy new passport holders, surely it can accommodate and fund some more asylum seekers.

How can Malta boast of being a huge economic success and subject detained migrants to appalling and inhumane conditions? How can Malta generate millions from its membership of the Union and truculently moan it was left on its own?

But the millions of euro were used on primary healthcare, oncology, housing and protecting jobs during the pandemic, Dalli insists.

No. The millions of euro were squandered by Labour’s corrupt governments. Those millions were spent recruiting over 700 persons of trust – to phantom jobs. On an average salary of €22,000, they cost the country €15.4 million per year.  Many earn more, such as the Ministry of Justice chief of staff, earning €38,000 per year besides additional perks.

Muscat squandered €4.2 million on Cafe Premier. The government gave away Australia hall, estimated at €5.5 million to its own Labour Party. It paid Mark Gaffarena €1.65 million for part of half a property in Valletta. Deborah Schembri alone is earning over €160,000 euro that we know of. What she earns for legal services with the Lands authority has not been published.

Joseph Cuschieri, the Presidents’ son-in-law, turned multi-million profits at the MFSA to huge losses. In 2017, MFSA made €7.5 million in profit – in 2019, Cuschieri spent €35.2 million and the taxpayer paid €25 million of his debts. Labour’s ex-minister Joe Brincat accused Cuschieri of running MFSA like a personal fiefdom – but Robert Abela defends Cuschieri.   At the Malta Gaming Authority, Cuschieri gave Nexia BT €170,000 in direct orders.

Between 2013 and 2017, the notorious Nexia BT received €2.4 million in government contracts, €2 million in direct orders. That’s what we know from the Government Gazette. Millions more we don’t know about – Konrad Mizzi’s Projects Malta refused to disclose contracts awarded to Nexia BT.

The country lost and will continue to lose millions on the Electrogas deals.  Some €40 million in excise tax was waived by Konrad Mizzi. Another €16 million due for delays in the project were deferred by the same Mizzi.  Over €40 million euro were lost on gas procurement from SOCAR in one year alone.  Ram Tumuluri and his fellow investors got away with over €60 million – with no trace. Millions more went into Yorgen Fenech’s 17 black from the Mozura wind farm.

The IIP scheme is fueling the shameful corruption machine that is the Labour government. The millions generated would never have been necessary if we had good governance. We would never have antagonised our European partners with our shameless greed.

The truth is that Muscat’s and Abela’s government drains funds to keep themselves in power – by using the salaried ‘persons of trust’ to capture the State’s organs for partisan political gain, by rewarding those who fund the Party with lucrative direct orders, by bribing those who know too much about crimes committed and prominent dissenters with phantom jobs and contracts, by perverting justice through employing middlemen procuring assassinations.

But according to Dalli, the blame falls squarely in the laps of PN MEPs Roberta Metsola and David Casa. She deviously promulgates the fiction that two solitary MEPs turned the whole world’s media against their country. And lacks the courage and decency to condemn the criminal abuse of her idol Muscat and his lackey Abela.

When Cesare Borgia took control of Romagna he put in charge a terrifying commander, Remirro de Orco. When Romagna calmed down, Borgia blamed de Orco for harming Romagna’s population. He murdered and cut him into two in the city square for all to see. On Peppi’s ‘Xarabank’, Dalli took a leaf from Macchiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ and did the same to Metsola and Casa.

Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Cesare Borgia also used Macchiavelli’s techniques. Dalli should remember that all ended badly and are universally reviled.