Bonnie says, ‘name them, Clyde’

I am something of an aviation geek.  I used to work for Air Malta, and watching it disappear was considerably more painful than watching yet another minister unveil yet another logo. I hated seeing an airline that meant something to this country destroyed on this bunch’s watch.

I still do.

Which is why, when Finance Minister Clyde Caruana starts talking about people trying to wreck KM Malta Airlines, I would quite like him to finish the sentence.  As in, who, precisely, are we talking about?

Caruana has warned about “mercenaries”, “saboteurs” and “hidden agendas”. He points to former Air Malta employees now occupying other positions, suggesting that some could benefit from the successor airline’s collapse.

These are serious allegations. They deserve rather more than a minister looking meaningfully into the middle distance. Or making oblique hints about the involvement of Joseph Muscat.

Read my lips, Clyde: name the people. Describe what they have done. Explain how it threatens the airline. If there is evidence of wrongdoing, tell us what action you have taken.  Now, not at some opportune moment, before the evidence disappears like Glenn Bedingfield’s Gozitan ghost.

Or are we supposed to sit around guessing which former employee is the villain in Clyde’s forthcoming blockbuster?

There is also an awkward bit of history which the minister might care to address.

Air Malta was an airline long before its rescue operation was needed, and there were ministers responsible for it. Among them was his illustrious former Cabinet colleague, Konrad Mizzi, whose stewardship was accompanied by the usual extravagant promises.

Remember the grand ambitions? The talk of flights to America, India and Canada? The confident assurances that everything was being sorted? We got the funeral instead.

Caruana must tell us whether the people he now has in mind were already working within Air Malta during Mizzi’s stewardship. Were they in positions of influence then? What responsibilities did they have? Who appointed them, who supervised them, and who listened to them?

I cannot answer those questions because Caruana has withheld the names. He can answer them, though. If some of today’s alleged wreckers were yesterday’s trusted insiders, the public is entitled to know how that happened.

Caruana cannot airbrush the history away by starting the story at the point where he rides in to save the day.

Nor does having been employed at Air Malta make somebody a saboteur. Plenty of people worked hard for an airline whose political masters kept announcing that salvation was just around the corner. They deserve better than being left under a cloud while a minister enjoys the suspense.

Be specific, Clyde. It would be fairer to them and considerably more useful to us.

And while you are at it, explain what you mean by sabotage. Has somebody interfered with a transaction? Misused confidential information? Sought an improper advantage? Or has somebody said something inconvenient about the airline’s finances?

Those are different things. A technocrat acting as a minister ought to be able to distinguish between them before reaching for the word “mercenary”.

And while we’re at it, what about those accounts?  The ones KM Malta Airlines has yet to file. Caruana promises clarity at a moment of his choosing, citing the sensitivity of negotiations over bringing in an airline investor.

I can understand why a minister would keep a negotiating position confidential.  I have rather more difficulty understanding why that should turn the public’s right to financial information into an appointment which only the minister can book.

The taxpayer has already lived through the grand assurances about Air Malta. We are entitled to something more substantial this time.

At risk of writing the bleeding obvious, publishing (obligatory) financial information is part of establishing credibility. So is explaining allegations.

Expecting us to accept both missing accounts and unnamed enemies on the strength of ministerial confidence is asking quite a lot, particularly given the government’s record. A discussion of the hardware accumulating inside Caruana’s shoes, following Joseph Muscat’s earlier contribution to the subject, doesn’t quite cut it.

So tell us who is trying to pull a fast one, Clyde. Tell us whether their influence goes back to the years when your own colleagues were assuring us that Air Malta’s future was bright.

You have chosen to make the accusation public.  Now have the decency to make it clear.