A Faustian bargain – Joe Azzopardi

Just before the PL leadership election in 2019, Robert Abela pronounced that he did not want to be a part of any ‘diabolical pact’ and presented his candidacy as an alternative to Chris Fearne.

However, Abela was soon recognised as the ‘continuity’ candidate, emphasising stability, unity and normality, as opposed to the bolder changes such as a clean slate at Castille, advocated by Chris Fearne.

Abela even pledged to maintain disgraced Muscat’s cabinet as well as the same staff at OPM. In his first speech as prime minister, he said “I will keep Joseph’s project alive and well”.

And boy, did he!

Former prime minister Joseph Muscat has said that it is the government which is the victim in the dissolution of the concession to sell three public hospitals to Vitals Global Healthcare and later Steward Health Care. The Court annulled the agreement after finding it has ‘fraudulent’ and ‘possibly criminal elements within it.

SHC has meanwhile accused the former prime minister and Keith Schembri of purposely misleading the company to convince it to sign the contract to run the hospitals. Steward said that Muscat and Schembri emphasised the ‘urgency’ of the deal so that due diligence processes could be bypassed. And where does Robert Abela fit into all of this?

Faust, the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe tells the story of a man unsatisfied with his life as a scholar and who becomes depressed.

After an attempt to take his own life, he calls on the Devil for knowledge and magical powers with which to indulge in all the pleasure and knowledge of the world.

In response, Mephistopheles, the Devil’s representative, appears. He makes a bargain with Faust. He will serve Faust with his magic powers for a set number of years. But at the end of the term, the Devil will claim Faust’s soul, and Faust will be eternally enslaved.

A Faustian bargain implies sacrificing one’s values for power or material gain. And that is what Robert Abela did to gain power.

And that’s where he stands today, held hostage by those who assisted him to gain power, including the spouse of the former prime minister.

That is the reason why the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner are not doing their jobs and we still have corrupt politicians, police and criminals free as birds.

That is why he is defending the Vitals and Steward concession. Robert Abela just cannot go against the will of his predecessor.

Because of this diabolical pact, he is dancing to Joseph’s music.

Biding for time, Robert Abela first said he will do everything to recoup the money given fraudulently to Vitals and Steward and then backtrack on his position.

After voting in favour of the scandalous deal in parliament, he now declares he will wait for a National Audit Office report he has requested before taking any such decision.  But we all know the Auditor General completed and published such a report three years ago.

Robert Abela is now with his back to the wall.  Take the newest scandal concerning Rosianne Cutajar. Chats published show without any doubt that she was colluding with a criminal, the man accused of masterminding the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination.

I am not mentioning the hot and sexy chats. She’s an adult and is free to do whatever she feels like doing. I am talking about the political parts of the chats, where she talks about reshuffles, fellow ministers and the nomination of the EU Commissioner.

Yors knew it all.

Robert Abela cannot censure his deputy for giving an astronomical financial package to his main canvasser just as he cannot rebuke or take action against his foreign minister for repeatedly breaching the law as has been declared by the Courts.

The prime minister cannot even discipline one of his juniors, Silvio Schembri, for manning his political offices with officers on a state salary.

More will surface but Robert Abela’s position will remain the same. The devil has come to claim his pound of flesh, charred as it may be.

                           

Sign up to our newsletter

Stay in the know

Get special updates directly in your inbox
Don't worry we do not spam
                           
                               
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

8 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
carlos
carlos
1 year ago

lest we forget – abela was the consultant for the most corrupt pm malta ever had, so don’t expect any better. he used to boast that his grandfather was a worker at the docks- that does’nt make him a socialist – on the contrary it made him a pig as rosanna stated.

Dzam
Dzam
1 year ago
Reply to  carlos

his grandfather is a distant past. PM Abela was born with a silver spoon and yes he behaves like he is the entitled one.

Mark Sant (Misha)
Mark Sant (Misha)
1 year ago
Reply to  Dzam

Very well said. His actions as prime minister and in particular the many u-turns he has done and his lack of vision of how decisions he takes effects the lives of the man in the street all point to this.

Thomas
Thomas
1 year ago

How can a person that is apparently bond by the strings of his predecessor have visions for a different future to that for what he is obliged to perform in order to keep the continuity he was elected for in the first place?

Every scandal revealed, and I have stopped counting them long ago for it’s getting even harder by the day to keep up with the numbers in counting, confirms just what many have been saying for a long time by now.

Greed
Greed
1 year ago

EZL next maybe if the website below is to be believed?

https://rijock.blogspot.com/2023/04/is-malta-about-to-sack-its-corrupt.html?m=1

Steve Borg
Steve Borg
1 year ago

Very well put!

Joe
Joe
1 year ago

Ilqat il musmar ezat fuq rasu habib. Ghandna prim li nistghu nighdulu FAUST.

Thomas
Thomas
1 year ago

In my view, the Faustian relationship is more a matter that has RC and YF as the protagonists at its centre.

The original story itself revolves around the ‘love affair’ of an old man to a young woman. The old man sold his soul to the devil in order to gain that young woman.

In reverse, RC sold her soul to the party in order to get more money. The party sold its soul to JM in order to get into power and stay there. JM sold the soul of Malta to the developers and dubious foreign investors for a passport in order to keep the money coming in.

But the question remains, who is the real Mephisto? It has different faces but is always after cheating, seducing and binding people into dependence so that they are lost of their free will.

Quoting Mephisto:

‘I am the spirit that always denies!
And rightly so; because everything that arises
Is worth that it perishes;

It would be better if nothing happened.
So everything you do is sin,
destruction, in short called evil,
My actual element.’

Fits the high ranking PLers well, always denying any wrongdoing, destroying the architectural heritage of Malta for the sake of serving the greed of developers, lying to the people with being exposed for it later on, selling out the country also at the expense of the environment and the health of the population. One could go on and on with all what went wrong during the past ten years and it just fits the story in its own ways by all the examples they have provided.

Related Stories

Opinion: salami slicing
There isn’t a single moment when a particular administration
Opinion: The Kappillan of Malta
I found Father Marc Andre Camilleri’s impassionate apologia for

Our Awards and Media Partners

Award logo Award logo Award logo