Opinion: Trolley problems for Amanda

If your boyfriend’s friend, who owns an airline company appoints you as the chief engineer despite having neither qualifications nor experience in aviation engineering, and you accept the job, have you done anything wrong?

When your boyfriend’s friend’s company forks out tens of thousands of euro on your salary but, as expected, you never service a single one of their aeroplanes, indeed never step anywhere near a plane, have you done anything wrong?

When, for months on end, despite continuing to cash in your lucrative salary, you never do any work for that airline company, have you done anything wrong?

Instead of servicing aeroplane engines, as you were contracted to do during the months of your employment, all you did was set up meetings and take care of your boyfriend’s diary. Have you done anything wrong?

And when finally one of your boyfriend’s friend’s aeroplanes explodes in mid-air, killing all the passengers on board, would you be innocent?

If you paid back just the difference in salary between what you were paid for your fake job as an airline engineer at your boyfriend’s friend’s company and what your own boyfriend would have paid you at his company for taking care of his diary, would you be forgiven?

Now, if your boyfriend’s friend knew all along when he gave you the job that you were neither qualified nor experienced in fixing planes and also knew you wouldn’t be doing any work for his company, would he just be reprimanded when his aeroplane fell out of the sky killing everybody on board including his staff?

This is the level of dangerous absurdity to which Labour has descended.  What’s even more infuriating is that at the end of this utterly shocking abuse, Clayton Bartolo, Clint Camilleri and even the totally shameless Amanda Muscat are still claiming they did nothing wrong.

They haven’t even acknowledged their nauseating betrayal of the people’s trust. Muscat not only stole tens of thousands of our money, but she’s also now insolently claiming innocence.

“I reiterate my innocence because, as the commissioner noted, everything that happened was in line with regulations and policies in place at that time”, Amanda Muscat arrogantly wrote to the principal permanent secretary Tony Sultana.

This is the level of arrogance, the total detachment from the public sentiment that even ministers’ lovers brandish in our faces. What utter brass neck do you have to have to keep insulting the public in this way?

The nation’s rage is palpable. And yet the minister’s wife feels so entitled that she heaps more of her contempt for the nation.

This is a person who profited financially from public funds through a conspiracy of deceit involving her lover, his friend and herself. For months, she cheated the country by failing to even turn up for her job at the Gozo ministry.

What the commissioner noted is that she did no consultancy work at all.  He said she didn’t even communicate with the Gozo ministry or his head of secretariat.

In any decent country, Muscat would long have been arrested, her assets frozen and brought before the court together with her two co-conspirators to face serious charges – participating in a criminal conspiracy, defrauding the state, making false statements, and perjury.

Instead, she simply keeps rubbing salt in our gaping wound because Labour lets her.

Labour demolished the institutions. Angelo Gafa’s police force looks on.  The police haven’t even bothered interrogating her for her fake consultancy post or her additional €50,000 in suspected kickbacks.

Labour appointed a Standards Commissioner who, even when faced with the most outrageous and criminal abuse of public office, still manages to provide the offenders with a get-out-of-jail card when he doesn’t find some frivolous excuse for not even investigating.

Clayton Bartolo, Clint Camilleri, Amanda Muscat and Robert Abela keep exploiting the Commissioner’s timid report for their nefarious purposes.  The Commissioner didn’t refer the case to the police, he said this wasn’t a phantom job, he didn’t mention the word ‘fraud’ once.

He said the Manual of Procedures was followed to the letter – so they did nothing wrong. So why, then, did he find them guilty of breaching several clauses of the ethics code?

Labour appointed chief groveler Anglu Farrugia as Speaker. He also chairs the Parliamentary Standards Committee and has a casting vote which he unfailingly deploys to exonerate Labour’s abusers.

For Anglu Farrugia, there’s nothing much here. Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri doesn’t even need to apologise for his part.  He’ll only get a reprimand.

If Rosianne Cutajar’s reprimand is anything to go by, it would simply be a polite letter stating that Camilleri breached several clauses of the code of ethics but that everything was fine and that he could go back to his work at the Gozo ministry.

Labour brags that it introduced the Standards in Public Life Act and appointed a Commissioner. Yet Labour has done more than anybody else to demolish any semblance of standards in public life.

It ensured that even the most revolting abuse of public office was perceived as acceptable and expected behaviour of those holding high office. At worst, Labour presents the defrauding of the state for the benefit of a minister’s lover as a minor infringement for which an apology suffices. Keep in mind that Clayton Bartolo wasn’t sacked because of this scandal.

Robert Abela kicked him out because he knew that far more lurid details would emerge about Bartolo’s multi-million-euro sponsorships of cycling organisations and how €50,000 ended up in his wife’s bank account.

Amanda Muscat isn’t innocent. Neither is Clayton Bartolo or Clint Camilleri. But Labour keeps bolstering their claims of innocence, laughing in the face of an outraged and exasperated public.