Yet another perambulating farce

Assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia’s description of Manuel Mallia is as apt today as it ever was.

Barely 48 hours after getting the worst news for the Maltese economy in decades, the PL government decides to stick two fingers up at one of the “baddies” who shafted them. The new High Commissioner to the UK is to be Manuel “cash under the mattress” Mallia, former criminal lawyer and twice-minister under disgraced then-prime minister Joseph Muscat.

Just as the rest of the world, led by the US, the UK. and Germany, kicks Malta out into the cold for failing to do its duty in enforcing international laws to prevent money laundering and funding of terrorism, Muscat’s replacement stooge Robert Abela decides this is a good time to show the UK exactly what he thinks of the rebuke he was handed by the British.

The UK doesn’t like rogue governments whose cabinet includes ministers accused of actual, honest-to-goodness armed bank robbery? They don’t like the idea of envelopes of cash being passed between accused murderers and then cabinet members? They don’t like governments who mollycoddle Ultimate Beneficial Owners of secret Panama companies, even those strongly suspected to be among the highest officials in the land? They don’t like being lied to, hoodwinked, scammed with a host of window-dressing, box-ticking?

We’ll show them. Let’s send them one of our most embarrassing, one of our most outrageous, one of our most scandalous – Manuel Mallia. What a perfect solution to the problem of filling the High Commissioner role and sticking it to the British at the same time.

Manuel Mallia. He with the trigger-happy driver, the criminal lawyer turned minister who announced an amnesty for all prisoners to celebrate his elevation to cabinet – and such an opportune appointment this was, with Corradino, after all, playing host to a multitude of his own clients. Sounds perfect for the position of High Commissioner to the UK.

So what that he failed to declare half a million euro he’d stashed under his bed and forgotten about. After all, we all need a little emergency nest egg, don’t you know. Does anyone remember the provenance of that stash of cash? He’d sold property and been paid in cash, I seem to recall?

Never mind any of those pesky rules about knowing where your buyer may have got that half a million euro. Irrelevant, of course. Forgetting to declare them was just a minor oversight, apparently, rectified the following year and so what on earth is the fuss all about?

€500,000, in cash, “forgotten” about. Sounds like the ideal candidate to foist on the UK, those “unjust” and “jealous” people who, if one listens to Abela and his coven of cackling crows, only voted to greylist Malta out of mean and nasty, unfounded spite.

Honestly, this government’s decisions read like a blueprint for small-minded pettiness accompanied by major scale stupidity and monumental self-harm.

The FATF has given Malta a strict timetable of goals to reach in order to be considered for removal from the dreaded list. Malta is going to have to do more than just pretend to comply this time. The FATF president Marcus Pleyer made it abundantly clear that none of the pettifogging, wool-pulling, deviation tactics Abela and his troupe of performing monkeys attempted were even remotely successful.

The Maltese government’s distasteful penchant for lies, gaslighting, reality-bending ruses has been noted, called out and penalised. Do Abela and his gang want to continue covering up for their corrupt, money laundering tax evading colleagues? Well, the FATF has told them, and the rest of us, that governments who allow such behavior, and the people who enable it, are not welcome at the inn.

We’ve been booted out, like a bunch of football louts from the one crucial game in town. Not allowed back in unless we mend our ways. And just like a bunch of delinquent yobs on a vengeance spree, we bluster and spit about it being “unfair” and “unjust” – and let’s find a way to get back at them, and show them what we really think of them.

Manuel Mallia appears to be their equivalent of slashing the ref’s tyres or keying the umpire’s car. This utterly compromised ministerial disaster, forced to resign because of an actual gunshot attack by his driver on an innocent motorist that he then tried to cover up, is going to be introduced to the Queen of England as the best Malta can produce to represent her.

This shady, unpleasant little man is going to strut around the embassies of London, carrying an invisible but glaring banner over his head reading: alleged tax evader, accepter of unaccounted-for €500,000 in cash, stasher of bank notes under the bed, protector of trigger-happy, dishonest policemen-drivers who lie to switch blame to their victims, former criminal lawyer who gave all his old clients the equivalent of a bottle of expensive champagne on being appointed home affairs minister, the cabinet member in charge of the police who used the members of the police force (anyone else remember this?) as waiting staff at an event held early on in the 2013 legislature.

It’s impossible to see this as anything other than a calculated offence to the UK. This is a deliberate slight that can and will only be seen as a mean-spirited backwards kick to the British for having been one of the three heavy-hitters to stand their ground on Malta’s shameful non-compliance with crucial international rules.

This, like the chorus of “not fair!” from Abela and his coven, is stupid, ill-conceived and dangerous. Being greylisted is a catastrophe for Malta and its economy. We should be attempting to show those who voted against us that we have listened, that we will act, that we will push all those who are compromised in government and around it into the arms of justice and prove to the world that we can clean up this mess.

The last thing we should be doing is presenting as our new High Commissioner a man so shrouded in scandal that even Muscat eventually shied away from him.

In every other civilised country in the world, there still exists such a thing as polite company. Polite company excludes criminals, shady characters, liars, cheats – anyone who might embarrass or compromise those he meets. Ambassadors and High Commissioners, from most countries, sit at the apex of most societies. Sending a man who would be shunned in any sort of decent gathering to represent our country among the most respected of polite society in London is not only a disgrace, it’s an unforgivable insult. And, like everything this PL government does, it will come back to haunt us.

                           

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Winston Smith
Winston Smith
2 years ago

Something tells me that Malta is destined to remain on the grey list for a very long time and the government knows it. Truly and seriously addressing corruption and money laundering would result in nothing short of self-implicating the majority of our cabinet. You simply cannot do a clean sweep with both hands stuck in the cookie jar!

saviour mamo
saviour mamo
2 years ago

The removal from the dreaded list doesn’t mean regain trust the next day is removed. It will take at least a decade especially with the British and the Germans, two nations that are very important for us. Oh my God what this government has done.

Joseph Tabone Adami
Joseph Tabone Adami
2 years ago

However ‘ill-conceived and dangerous’ the choice could be is always debatable.

Will it, however, be ‘graciously accepted’ or will somebody be ‘not amused’?

Paul Pullicino
Paul Pullicino
2 years ago

A US ambassador who happens to be an ignorant pig political witless appointee from Texas always carries weight of the USA. A small country’s ambassador needs to be a little less obnoxious.

Michael Mifsud
Michael Mifsud
2 years ago

While I believe that the reason why Manuel Mallia is being appointed is none but the one in the article, maybe Abela truly believes that by appointing an ex-criminal lawyer to such an important position will show that he means business in resolving this mess. After all Abela is a person with delusions of grandeur and with an ego as big as the world.

carlos
2 years ago

First it was the daughter of dumiku mintoff shaming Malta by throwing horse’s shit in UK’s parliament, now we have a puppet pm throwing more shit to represent this Mafia state in the UK. Why does it always has to be a labour government to shame us. Tlifna dak kollu li ksibna f’hamsa u ghoxrin sena tort ta l-akbar pm korrot li qatt rat Malta.

Henry s Pace
Henry s Pace
2 years ago

MANWEL THE TURNCOAT OF THE 2013 ELECTIONS,
LABELED BY THE DISGRACED JOSEPH MUSCAT AS THE ELECTION ‘ STAR ‘ CANDIDATE .
THIS MAN IS A SHAM TO MEET THE QUEEN AND STAND WITH ALL TE DIPLOMATIC CORPS.

Last edited 2 years ago by Henry s Pace
Godfrey Leone Ganado
Godfrey Leone Ganado
2 years ago

Can anyone imagine him addressing a business conference in the City of London, to promote Malta as the ideal European Centre for locating one’s blue chip business?
Can anyone imagine him socialising with the British, whose standards for etiquette jar with his monkey cage standards?
The only thing I see him capable of doing for promoting grey-listed Malta, is explaining how easy it is to transfer suspiciously earned loads of cash, from your mattress depository, to a Government controlled bank depositary.
I ask: is this how our Govenment, with the offered assistance of the PN and professional Institutions wants to retrieve our white reputation in substance and not just form by. ticking of boxes.

Michael Borg
2 years ago

Blanche, excellent article as usual. Thank you!
May I include that Mallia was also in charge when Major Curmi and 3 others were given doubtful, accelerated promotions in the Armed Forces to the detriment to 4 Lt Colonels who were more senior and competent than them. Curmi finished Brigadier ‘sparat’ after these shenanigans.
It is protocol, I believe that the UK can refuse to accept this disgusting appointment. However as diplomatic as ever, they probably will and let Mallia stew in his own ‘borma’.

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