Labour – bumming off the taxpayer
Wenzu Mintoff: he edits KullHadd and his salary is paid by Malta Enterprise
The Labour Party appears to believe that a job with a government agency is not to be taken seriously, that it is a time-filler which gives you security and pays the bills while you get on with the business of doing something more important – like another job.
It also seems to think that the salary of its newspaper editor should be paid by the state.
Wenzu Mintoff is head of legal services at Malta Enterprise and Malta Industrial Parks, which is by no means a junior position.
He oversees, and has full access to, all the agreements and contracts which those two entities enter into with private businesses.
He is privy to commercially-sensitive information and to requests for financial assistance.
Yet in his spare time – and for all we know, from his office at Malta Enterprise – he edits a Sunday newspaper, the Labour Party’s rag KullHadd.
The Labour Party does not pay him a salary to edit KullHadd. Instead, it retains Marisa Micallef at a significant sum and gets its editor free of charge off Malta Enterprise and the taxpayer.
You have to hand it to Labour. They really know how to work the system. The party has already got its CEO off Air Malta, which is keeping his job open for him should he decide to return.
But God help anyone who points out how wrong this is, because they are ‘victimising Labour’ rather than telling Labour to ditch its old ways of failing to distinguish between the party and the state.
If this is how they behave in opposition, heaven knows how they’re going to make free when in government.
Wenzu Mintoff’s bosses at Malta Enterprise have told him to drop the editorship of KullHadd. They say that they would have told him exactly the same thing had he edited another newspaper.
That makes sense. You can’t edit a newspaper and do a full-time job as a senior department head at a government agency. One or the other is going to suffer.
But there is a more important reason why he’s been told to get away from KullHadd. He has a major conflict of interest.
As head of legal services at Malta Enterprise, he is privy to precisely the sort of stories that KullHadd might want to carry. But as head of legal services, he is bound by confidentiality.
He is in a position of trust. But can he be trusted?
That question is academic. When Malta Enterprise deals with its clients, brings in the editor of the Labour Party’s Sunday newspaper, and introduces him as its head of legal services, there are bound to be issues of trust and of serious discomfort.
Business operators have complained to Malta Enterprise that they don’t like the fact of their private information being made freely accessible to KullHadd’s editor.
It’s crazy, isn’t it?
Wenzu Mintoff would argue that the information isn’t being made available to KullHadd’s editor but to Malta Enterprise’s head of legal services. People who like to wear two hats when neither one fits usually speak this way: as though they are two separate people rather than a single person with two conflicting roles.
As the finance minister put it: “Newspapers carry a lot of stories about people in business, and government contracts. This puts Dr Mintoff in a very difficult position because he has access to a lot of confidential information. The problem has manifested itself already in some articles published since Dr Mintoff took over the editorship of the newspaper.”
Wenzu Mintoff, unbelievably and with the backing of his political party, is challenging his employer. That alone shows what scant respect Labour has for the employer/employee relationship, particularly when the employer is a government agency and therefore, in the Labour way of thinking, a free-for-all.
If you are head of legal services at an important agency and your employer tells you that you are not permitted to also edit a newspaper, then you drop the newspaper or you leave your job.
We’re not talking whistle-blowing here. We’re not talking human rights. We’re not even talking politics.
No, we’re talking about doing your job properly and about not opening yourself up – and more importantly, the organisation for which you work – to issues of divided loyalties or breach of trust.
Mintoff, incredibly, has stood his tenuous ground by arguing that Malta Enterprise’s code of ethics does not apply to him because the editorship of the Labour Party’s newspaper is a ‘political role’, and employees of Malta Enterprise are permitted to hold political roles.
For all his equivocating, Mintoff must know that a newspaper editor is a newspaper editor. It’s a job that takes up a lot of time and which demands investigation of just the sort of information to which he is privy, in his other role.
Typically, he now plays the virgin martyr by objecting to reporters that “a Malta Enterprise internal matter has been leaked to your newspaper”.
It’s strange that he can’t see the irony of this.
While he complains because his case has been leaked to the newspapers, he, the editor of KullHadd, can rifle freely through the filing cabinets at Malta Enterprise and look up any information he pleases.
The Labour Party has, of course, entered the arena to defend its own. Its pompous statement said: “Labour has clear and unequivocal indications that this is a reprisal by high-ranking personalities within the Nationalist Party who have been exposed in KullHadd for what they did. Dr Mintoff will defend his rights in court.”
Toni Abela has now taken up the cudgels for his old friend Wenzu (they set up Alternattiva Demokratika together way back when). At the start of Labour’s marathon general conference a couple of days ago, he called it “political discrimination”, and vowed to defend him as he would all those who are discriminated against politically.
Fine words, indeed.
The name ‘Partit Laburista’ does not feature at all on the conference backdrop. Instead, we are being treated to ‘A new movement for a better country’, emblazoned behind the speakers. With attitudes like Toni’s and Wenzu’s, it will be far from new and certainly not better.
This article was published in The Malta Independent on Sunday, last Sunday (but nobody noticed).
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Nobody noticed because everybody and his brother were glued to your blog watching the Consuelo story unfold. Toni and Wenzu of Alternattiva Demokratika fame, now very cosy under the Labour torch, are no longer the virgins they pretended to be back then. It was all a smoke screen, we knew all along.
Another sleaze bag milking the cow.
I share your concerns, Daphne, but cannot the same argument be made if instead of Wenzu Mintoff there were PN officials occupying this or similar posts? In fact, there are a number of examples which can be made for which the same argument applies.
[Daphne – There is no such thing as a similar post to a newspaper editor, unless it is the head of a television newsroom. Let’s split the argument: time and loyalty. If he were editor of the Nationalist Party newspaper, the issue would be purely one of time: you simply cannot edit a Sunday newspaper, which is a full-time job in itself, and also fulfill your obligations to your employer as a senior executive at a government agency. I know because I used to edit a Sunday newspaper myself for a year, and had to give it up because I couldn’t even fulfill my obligations towards my home and children, still less a full-time post elsewhere. But there would be no issue of loyalty if the government is Nationalist, for the simple reason that the editor of the PN paper would have no interest in causing trouble for the government. On the other hand, if the government were Labour, then yes, loyalty issues would come into it and his position would be untenable for that reason too, and not just on grounds of time. Wenzu Mintoff is anti-government in such an extreme way that his loyalty to his employer is in doubt already. It should be obvious to him that he is already there on sufferance, because the government doesn’t want to make a martyr and victim of him by moving him on. But he is a liability, that much is obvious. Nobody – no employer, not even in the private sector – wants a potential viper in its nest, who might be more loyal to some other entity than to the organisation which pays his salary. By editing the Labour Party newspaper, which isn’t even a newspaper as such but a malicious scandal rag of the style of Malta Today, he makes his position completely untenable.]
Daphne, editor or no editor I would never have put him in such an important and delicate position. Let’s say he does not remain editor -aren’t we still in the same position that the stories could still be leaked? I think one needs to choose. You cannot serve two masters.
[Daphne – You’re right, of course. There’s nothing to stop Wenzu Mintoff leaking stories to KullHadd even if he ceases to be its editor, and he probably will. He should have been moved along.]
Dear Daphne, I noticed the article because it is somewhat ‘close to home’. I think it is flabbergasting that Dr Mintoff does not see the blatant conflict of interest. Malta Enterprise holds a lot of sensitive information on the business scene in Malta and this could, sometimes, make or break a government. Can Dr Mintoff honestly assure us that he will NEVER utter one single syllable to his peers at the Labour Party newspaper about his day job and, as they say in Maltese, ipoggi rasu taht mannara fuq dan? It is almost impossible that this can take place and therefore his positions are untenable and he must renounce to one of them so as not to completely lose his face and his reputation.
Keep up the good writing. I love it.
This is best said in Maltese: Ma jisthix minn Alla li halqu.
Daphne is this purely a PN supporters site? I ask, because the whiter than white PN officials never seem to do anything wrong. No scandals, no fornication with anyone but their own wives and husbands. No jobs for the boys. Please do not mention Air Malta! 4 Avro Jets bought to find favour with the UK and which lost the airline a reputed Lm80million. What about Azzurra Air? Who is paying who’s salary? The keeping of a job is commonplace at Air Malta. Ask many in the present employ of ministers. I agree with you most of the time, but at times you push it to the limit. After so many years in office, I think that the PN has perfected the art of milking every cow in the kingdom. The difference between the two parties is that one shafts you elegantly and convinces you its for your own good, the other is crass and you can literally see it coming! I guess most of you are very elegant!
Where have you been the past ten days? Too busy to have a peep at this blog? U hallina!
Errm… I dont think men and women can fornicate with their wives and husbands….
From Wikipedia: “Fornication is a term which typically refers to consensual sexual intercourse between persons not married to each other.”
Hence the only way i could fornicate with my wife would be for me to separate and then have sex with her.
[Daphne – Not really. Even if you are separated, she remains your wife. She only becomes your ex wife if you’re divorced.]
I agree that this is an unacceptable conflict of interests. But there are many more conflicts of interests taking place in Malta many of which are government controlled posts. And the Finance Minister shouldn’t be making any declarations on conflicts of interest – a bit brazen coning from him, I think!
It’s like the grocer next door working part time as your gynecologist.
Tajba! Or maybe the greengrocer delivering his wares to your house = http://www.independent.com.mt/news2.asp?artid=98116
There’s the other questionable position of Roderick Galdes who works with Mepa while criticising its workings in parliament as an MP.
Carmel Caccopardo and Censu Galea won their case against Lorry Sant on some similar case.
Just read on The Times press digest what Malta Today wrote: that after savage attacks on Robert Musumeci he was let down by the PN and asked not to contest the casual elections. Daphne, you were right a couple of days ago. I am sure that Saviour Balzan gave you the news!
[Daphne – That’s right, Saviour Balzan and his pathetic newsroom have to read this blog for the real news, because they’re too tied up persecuting columnists who refused to work for them (me), the prime minister for being party leader instead of John Dalli, and all the other sundry axes that Balzan and de Giorgio have to grind with the help of that leading ahdar Matthew Vella, somebody so ridden with social chips that he could open a Spinola outlet of the Amsterdam favourite Chipsy King. How farcical they are, jaghtu palata lil Musumeci u Herrera, when THEY are the news.]
With his tenacity to defend such a hopeless case I would hire him as legal adviser anytime, but then again I may end up in print.
Another case of buying political peace?
Wenzu Mintoff was always lucky in his full time jobs. First with Mid Med Bank doing absolutely nothing like vetting drafted deeds and taking days on end and finding loopholes so that these may be redrafted. Then this ‘virgin’ found out that during his uncle’s administration, corruption was galore and Mid Med Bank funds were being siphoned to Labour criminals and thugs for bankrupt companies. And then acting the whistleblower when he deemed it fit during the Nationalist administration. Yes, he had it good. And now we see that he is something at Malta Enterprise. Either Malta Enterprise or Kullhadd. He has to choose. And this is no political discrimination. He should be accountable for his actions, like anyone else.
Another Labour scandal, and they as always want to have their cake and eat it. Il-veru bla zejt f’wicchom.
What about the Labour MP who is employed at MEPA and also Labour’s spokesman on MEPA?
What struck me in this blog is that Marisa Micallef has yet again landed a “well paid job”. Not a well paid job on merit or her professional skills – but on arse-licking, switching sides and total lack of principles or morals. So much for new Labour or whatever they plan to call themselves. Not only don’t we see the novelty of the Labour Party, but they’re actually collecting the rejects of the Nationalist Party – GREAT. Now Malta can boast a weak government, short of ideas, and an opposition full of past and present rejects – BRILLIANT. I’m sure not regretting having lost my right to vote!
It’s not just Labour. It’s a national malaise. In fact it’s universal. The vast majority of people everywhere will sponge on the state. Under the thin veneer of civilisation we’re still animals in the jungle really. Pre-independence we used to say ‘thallas ir-Regina’ when we nicked or bummed something. Now we say ‘ihallas il-gvern’ but a lot of us are too damn stupid to realise that ‘il-gvern’ is us.
But I agree, it takes some cheek to sponge off the state AND dedicate yourself to undermining the government.
Then again, a magistrate is paid by the state to play his/her part – a major part – in keeping criminals out of our hair, not to party with them whilst they indulge in criminal behaviour. Not to mention what the odd judge gets up to. So with that kind of example from the dispensers of justice, what do you expect?
And to think PL did not endorse Dr. Andre Camilleri to the bench.
Very well said, Tim!
Dr. Andre Camilleri is one of the most respectable lawyers I have ever had the pleasure to work with (as my boss nonetheless).
When Dr Andre` Camilleri was not accepted to be a member of the bench, I suspected that something somewhere was not working as it should.
Dr Camilleri does not deserve to sit next to people like Noel, Patrick and Consuelo.
Time is confirming that people’s perception is not far from the reality we’re living in Malta.
Dr Andre’ Camilleri is a man of much integrity and definitely with no skeletons in his cupboard. He would have been a tremendous asset to the judiciary, a judiciary which in the last few months has been riddled with scandals and which as a result has sadly led to the public’s lack of confidence in the justice system.
All it needed was Consuelo !
PL did not endorse Dr. Camilleri because he would not pull their strings; not anybody’s for that matter. He’s an honourable man for good.
gahan, have you forgotten MIRJAM BARTOLO? Is she still around? (sorry I don’t live in Malta so I may be out of touch …..)