Sent in by someone known to me:
On a popular current affairs discussion RAI programme, a prominent political person asked the rhetorical question: “Si deve chiedere se Malta veramente e un paese del UE o no.” The body language of both the interviewer and his guest to that question was in the negative. Because Malta under a Labour government is ruled on tribal feudalistic grounds more in keeping with a third world banana republic. The only difference is that it operates under a veneer of nominal adherence to the EU principles of governance.
The dynamics in the evolution of the EU commissioner’s portfolio reserved for Malta is interesting. Initially it appeared that Malta was to be assigned the Justice portfolio without the Rule of Law aspect. But even that truncated but onerously prestigious portfolio must have been considered to be absurd in the hands of a representative of Joseph Muscat’s government. So, they gave it to someone more reliable.
But the Maltese problem remained. How were they to accommodate a nominee of the embarrassing Maltese government? They did it by stripping off a limited section of the Justice portfolio and matched it to aspects of the nominee’s CV that outwardly, leave a favourable impression with the EU. However, this came with many strings attached. The Equality nominee is a “junior commissioner” in that she works on behalf of the other two commissioners to whom she has to report. It seems that the nominee is a commissioner in name only, as she may be more of a glorified MEP with no staff of her own, having to rely on the staff of the two other commissioners.
And maybe even her duties may be conditioned by the other two commissioners. In order to function she needs the support of the two other commissioners. If that support is witheld she is probably powerless. There are other checks and balances to her performance. If that is the case, then Malta’s EU commissioner is not trusted even in this less onerous role having to work under supervision. This represents a downgrading of Malta’s previous commissioners’ roles.
The limited duties assigned to the commissioner-designate are oxymoronic.
She will be tasked with leading the fight against any type of discrimination. One cannot discriminate according to race, to creed, to gender, to political allegiance, etc. When she was Minister of Equality, Helena Dalli’s government discriminated according to political creed on tribal grounds. Consider the countless promotions and jobs awarded to people of their tribe at the expense of more qualified, competent independent-minded people. No wonder the civil service is in such a mess.
Even when call for tenders are issued the Ministry of EU Affairs and Equality under Helena Dalli has been found to unethically manipulate the adjudication process in order to favour one tenderer at the expense of another. It is difficult to keep a straight face when you hear that Helena Dalli plans to explain to the European parliament that “inequality leads to inefficiency and a waste of talent and resources”.
This statement as Minister of Civil Liberties is belied by the numerous resignations of competent people discriminated against in her government’s systematic, massive infiltration of the armed forces, the police force and the judiciary. The commissioner-designate indulged in rampant nepotism and clientelism throughout her ministry and she now solemnly declares that she will neither seek nor take instructions from any entity. She doesn’t exactly have a good track record. Labour’s discrimination even favoured their supporters with a past history of criminal records or disciplinary indiscretions in the restructuring of these delicate, supposedly law upholding institutions. The ombudsman has ruled that even on health and medical issues, people belonging to the Labour tribe have been given preferential treatment.
The commissioner-designate will be tasked with proposing new anti-discrimination legislation. Helena Dalli’s government has been good at enacting legislation which they proudly flaunt to the EU. However, they have been equally good at not enforcing this legislation. Or rather, enforcing it discriminately provided it serves the interest of the Labour government. In Labour’s Malta, an ordinary citizen suspected of wrongdoing is confronted by the full force of the law. However, any Labourite government official caught red handed in his crime is dealt with differently. He is regaled with a “phantom suspension” continuing to receive the benefits of his political allegiance. Despite the incontrovertible incriminating evidence, he is protected by means of a fake inquiry. This investigation is conducted by the puppet Clouseauesque police force that slumbers through its motions in aeternum. This extreme, gratifying impunity ensures that Labourite colleagues of Helena Dalli can literally get away with murder, let alone theft, bribery, extortion, etc.
The commissioner-designate will be tasked with leading the fight against discrimination wherever it exists. So, the new commissioner will be preaching to other EU countries, that which was not practiced in her own country under her watch as Minister of Equality. She had considerable influence on the prime minister. Yet, she never attempted to speak against the government’s discriminatory policies which are known to all.
Under a Labour government, being critical of the government or not subscribing to their political creed is considered to be a physical handicap to their careers or future quality of life. Yet, Malta’s new EU commissioner is to implement the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with disability.
The new commissioner has to crack down on gender-based violence. The Labour Party in government coordinates a social network of trolls (which includes senior government workers) that intimidate, harass, dehumanize, threaten anyone who dares hold the government to account.
It is no coincidence that the majority of the members of these dissenting NGOs and independent press are females. They are subjected to particularly vitriolic verbally violent abuse. Their femininity is vulgarly targeted to humiliate them so as to dissuade them from further dissent. This verbal violence creates a climate of fear and tension out of which a number of physical acts of violence have erupted.
In a small, closely knit society that Malta is, these victims are branded, stigmatized and marginalised. On this point alone, the commissioner-designate’s position is untenable She sanctimoniously tells the MEPs that online violence must not be allowed to silence women and girls. Under her watch, the government did exactly that on a daily basis and she did nothing about it, even though it was her responsibility.
The new commissioner has to ensure that better support to victims of gender-based violence is provided, also to improve the protection and to safeguard the rights of the victims. Take Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination as a typical case study. The shameful handling of Daphne’s case by Helena Dalli’s government both before and after the assassination is reprehensible on all levels.
During her life, the Labour government incited their supporters through their keyboard army of trolls that included Helena Dalli’s family members. Posthumously, the government’s behaviour has been intended to use her as an exemplary deterrent against any other journalist who dares to hold its bad governance to account. They have spitefully rubbed salt in the wounds of the grieving family. They have systematically attempted to desecrate her memory. They have been ruled to have breached the human rights of her family on repeated occasions. They have intimidated, punished, humiliated and threatened the grieving family for seeking justice. The treatment meted out by the government and their acolytes has almost been sadistic. They have done all in their power to ensure that the government’s role in the murder is covered up. They have attempted to deny justice by conjuring every inconceivable excuse to delay justice indefinitely. These delays are intended to facilitate the burying of key evidence and to break the will of the victim’s family in their almost hopeless quest for justice.
They had the gumption not to announce an inquiry fulfilling all the cardinal criteria laid out by the Council of Europe including that of the deadline. What Muscat cynically did announce just a week before the deadline was a parody of the real thing. A travesty of justice. A cruel joke against the victim’s family straight out of Batman’s nemesis’ manual. Muscat now covers up by claiming he is willing to “engage” with the family after more than two years of shunning them. It seems he is planning to take them for yet another diversionary ride.
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The new commissioner will seek to obtain prosecutions of perpetrators of gender based violence. Through the capture of all institutions, the government now ensures that investigation, inquiries, prosecutions can only occur if the suspect (provided the suspect is the Labour government and its donors) wills it, and even then, it is the suspect who determines the terms of reference of the investigation, thereby conditioning the outcome.
The Maltese legal system has never been easy to navigate, but under a Labour government it has become a veritable minefield. Who is the government-appointed police officer or judge who would jeopardise his future career and livelihood by arousing the government’s ire? Directly or indirectly the government interferes with the delivery of justice when it is under the microscope.
It has obstructed justice covertly in many instances. Hence the plethora of meaningless inquiries against Labour exponents that they pretend to conduct, or that are never concluded or when concluded, skirt around crucial evidence in order to exculpate the culprit. How has it come to the ultimate discriminatory stage that a perpetrator with links to the Labour government cannot be prosecuted let alone investigated whereas any non-political criminal is dealt with in the standard way?
All the inquiries the government have launched have been inquiries only in name (when investigating members of the party Helena Dalli adheres to). The Labour government uses the inquiry as a democratic tool for a dual purpose: firstly, to disarm any criticism by taking the wind out of its critics’ sails and secondly, as a diversionary cover under which the government’s discriminatory policies can proceed unabated.
At their worst, they have even used them to suppress any democratic opposition as in the case of the infamous Egrant pseudo-inquiry.
And the commissioner designate is expected to add violence against women to the list of EU crimes. How about obstruction and perversion of justice by the suspected criminals in such crimes? The harbouring and protection of perpetrators of gender-based violence just because they belong to a particular clan that controls the state? An ex-policeman claiming he had evidence confirming the prime minister to be a big-time money launderer and linking Daphne’s murder to a sleazy minister was involuntarily repeatedly locked up by the police in an asylum where he received psychiatric treatment in solitary confinement.
The designated commissioner will be entrusted with empowering women at work. In the Labour government’s hands this is how it works: awarding the senior post in the Fisheries Ministry to a proven incompetent lady affiliated to the labour tribe in lieu of a qualified man with a good track record of running that department. The ensuing corruption debacle she unleashed was unmasked by the Spanish police. Despite all the warning signals in the fish farm industry, the local police were as usual next to useless.
But the stench of corruption trickled up to the incumbent Maltese commissioner’s director-general. This is yet another embarrassment for the EU. This is a recurring theme of the local government’s discriminatory appointments supposedly in favour of gender equality. They justified the discriminatory appointment with the objective of gender equality. It is ironic that the Commissioner-designate is intending to volubly address the European parliament thus ”the societies that achieve the most are those that provide a space to everyone to make use of their talents and abilities”
Helena Dalli describes herself when she claims that a sizeable percentage of people say that they do not discriminate, “but”. It seems that for her, locally the “but” is the solution for the national (read Labour’s) interest.
However, in other EU countries she will self-righteously convince them that their “but” is the problem. Because for Helena Dalli’s movement, the LGBTIQ rights that she championed are secondary to the rights of her government’s supporters.
So, you can have the vicious verbal assault of their keyboard army on social media to dehumanize critics of the government by targeting these very traits which she supposedly championed. An LGBT member of the community who had just been convicted of online revenge pornography was rewarded for his ingratiating political allegiance by being given a senior post in the EU working in tandem with Helena Dalli.
He was held up publicly as a role model for socialism. Yet, the commissioner-designate would have the MEPs believe that she does not condone that crime and that she will strive to encourage participation of the victims of these crimes.
How will the commissioner-designate prepare for her grilling by the European MEPs?
She is having direct conversations with them addressing the uncomfortable issues in full honesty and truthfulness.
There has always been a huge disconnect between the words and actions of this shameless Labour government. We all know the disdain that Joseph Muscat & Co hold for MEPs.
On their social media, Labour trolls (including members of Helena Dalli’s family) boast how they attain whatever they want out of the EU as the EU parliament is impotent and toothless. Moreover, they taunt the opposition detractors by maintaining that only a Labour government is an effective negotiator. This is because they understand the workings of the EU to such an extent that they can run circles around the EU commission and twist them around Labour’s little finger. So, the Labour government treats MEPs as the fools it considers them to be. After all, in their own words, Malta under Labour is the best screwing manipulator in the EU.
The EU being the EU, Malta’s commissioner’s post will in all likelihood be approved. But both the nominee and the Labour government will be uncomfortable. One of the traits Labour is allergic to, is accountability. They consider themselves accountable to no one but themselves.
The Labour Party is above the law. The law applies for everyone save members of their tribe. That was one of the reasons for their ill-fated fanatical rejection of EU membership. The EU presidency will have set one precedent in the unorthodox dumbing down of the Maltese Commissioner’s post. Unwittingly, they would have set a second precedent: they will find themselves in the awkward situation of having appointed a commissioner to preach to other EU countries concepts of equality and non-discrimination that woefully were not practiced in her own country when she was the influential Minister of Equality and Civil Liberties.
The Labour government was infuriated when the European MEPs refused to turn a blind eye against their rule of law issues. Now, they will be elated when the MEPs turn a blind eye from their callous hypocrisy encapsulated in the persona of Helena Dalli.