Justice Minister deploys Sicilian-style political patronage

A regular reader has sent me the following email. Rather than reporting on it, I shall simply reproduce it in full as it is self-explanatory. This is the most repulsive form of Sicilian-style political patronage, and what makes it worse is that the Justice Minister has his minions refer to “Owen Bonnici’s Ministry”. There is no such thing. It is the Ministry of Justice.

I work in the fiduciary services sector and last Friday afternoon I received a call at the office from the Ministry of Justice. The woman at the other end of the line said:

“Hello, sinjura, il-wara nofs in-nhar it-tajjeb. Hawnhekk mill-Ministeru ta’ Owen Bonnici u qed incemplu biex naraw ghandkhomx bzonn xi haga.”

(Hello, madam, good afternoon. I’m calling from Owen Bonnici’s Ministry to see whether you need anything.)

I was left speechless and all I could say was: “What?” The woman just repeated: “Hawnhekk mill-Ministeru ta’ Owen Bonnici u qed incemplu biex naraw nistghux nghinukhom f’xi haga. QED TIFHEM?” (We’re calling to see whether you need anything. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?)

Of course I had understood what she meant only too well, and said “No, thank you, we don’t need any help”.

I think it is dangerously stupid to have government ministers call up companies working in our sector (contact details are readily available through the Malta Financial Services Authority), to ask this kind of thing. It is bad enough that this sector is fast going down the drain because of their corruption, without also having them ring us up to see whether we need any corrupt favours.

Many of these companies are licensed to sell Maltese passports, and Owen Bonnici is the Minister responsible for Identity Malta, which in turn is responsible for passport sales.

Thanks again and just thought that you would want to bring this issue to light but will leave in your good hands. The reason I am sending this via email and not as a comment on your blog is because i’d rather not be pin-pointed out by some ministry or other as we have all seen how that works out.

“Look, Janice, complain all you like, but I’m really busy here with routine daily three hours of political patronage.”