The Carnival Floats Inspector speaks at last
Joseph Muscat: took a free trip last August with Karmenu Vella on Gaddafi's private jet.
His duties as inspector of carnival floats now over, the leader of the Opposition has turned his mind to more serious matters.
He said in a radio interview yesterday that he can’t comment about the situation in Libya because his “role is not that of a commentator”.
And then he went on to use the crisis as a vehicle for wheeling out the Malta Labour Party’s myriad fixations.
1. The events in North Africa show that EU policy for the Mediterranean has failed.
2. Rebel leaders are against ‘foreign interference’ – yes, that’s right, indhil barrani.
3. Malta should be a humanitarian base but not a military one.
4. The Libyan uprising has demonstrated that Air Malta is a strategic asset (so that’s all right then; it served a purpose after all) and that a low-cost airline wouldn’t have been useful in the evacuation. This led into a diatribe about how the government wants to dismantle Air Malta, even as the dismantling of Libya elicited no comment from this Big Brain.
Perhaps I should quit complaining that our Labour leader says nothing about Libya because the last thing Malta needs now – after John Dalli spreading himself wide on the international media and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici doing his crackpot thing on Al Jazeera – is yet more excruciating statements from another Maltese politician.
These are people who are patently incapable of rising to the occasion.
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Nothing original. No enlightening suggestions nor a sign of direction. Those people who want a change should at least inform themselves of the alternative availability. Any change should be for the better. The risk has to be a calculated risk- which is not the case here. ‘God lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’. Amen.
‘rising to the occasion’? Do I detect some doublespeak here, Daphne?
[Daphne – No. I can’t think of anything less interesting than that, given the people involved.]
Are we to understand that we should foment unrest in North Africa to keep Air Malta in business?
Tajjeb biss ghal xi president ta’ kazin tal-banda, fejn tipikament dan jimxi fuq qudiiem tal-marc ixejjer lin-nies u jippoppa sidru.
L-ikbar krizi li jista’ jkollok hija liema statwa se tohrog l-ewwel u liema banda se ddoq l-ahhar innu. Ma jkollux ghalfejn jattendi ikliet formali u jkun jista’ jiekol burgers u fniek kemm irid u kemm joghgbu.
Why shouldn’t Malta be a military base?
Everyone is going on about neutrality but they forget that we did join a military alliance in 2004, when we joined the EU. You cannot just scoop up structural funds and opportunitajiet ghal uliedna and then opt out of the common defence policy (when, inshallah, it is put into action).
The Times Poll:
Poll
Should Malta be neutral in the current Libyan upheaval?
Yes in all circumstances 48.4%
Not if there is a massacre 37.7%
No in all circumstances 13.9%
Joseph ghal issa m’ghandu xejn xi jghid.
Xi tlett snin ohra ‘in hajndsajd’ jghid li jmissu qal mill-ewwel li Gaddafi kellu jirrizenja minnufieh, ir-ribelli kellhom ragun, KMB kien mignun. u Dalli zelaq wahda sew.
Hindsight is 20-20.
These people are professionals in unprofessionalism.
“2. Rebel leaders are against ‘foreign interference’ –”
I thought the rebel leaders were primarily against Gaddafi, and Joseph would say that.
Daphne, in the four points that you summarise, I can see AST’s political hand.
Reliable sources have informed me that Air Malta employees at Tripoli airport were, in fact, evacuated by Medavia, probably at no cost. This was due to the fact that Air Malta decided to suspend its flights, for safety reasons.
Maybe Joseph Muscat should pop out of that carnival float and tell us whether Gaddafi gave his party any money, and what he thinks about his party’s former treasurer doing this sort of work for Mutassim and Saadi Gaddafi.
I also expect hot L-Orizzont reporter John Pisani to whip up a nice investigative report about the GWU newspaper’s former columnist. While we’re at it, maybe Tony Zarb can be wound up and made to speak about the fact that he engaged the services of the Gaddafi boys’ ‘procurer’. Maybe he was hopin’ to do some smokin’ with NAlly Furtado.