L-ewwel ir-rednecks. Issa tal-bizniss.
Labour's fresh new face Karmenu Vella wants to rescue businessmen not drowning people.
Joseph Muscat has kept the rednecks happy with his declaration that Malta should “stand firm like Italy” and refuse to rescue boat-people at risk of drowning.
Now his party is trying to do the same with what it calls tal-bizniss.
The government has said there is no call for using taxes to compensate Maltese operators who lost money in Libya, though it will have their tax payments rescheduled to give them some breathing space.
This was the correct attitude.
But not according to the Labour Party, which has jumped into the breach to try and wrest some votes from those operators. And who better to speak about it than Brontosaurus One, Karmenu Vella, who has an extensive network of business contacts in Tripoli, and who was chairman of a 50% Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company-owned corporation for some years.
The Opposition never so much as squeaked in parliament about Malta’s role in the Libyan crisis, let alone presented a motion to force the democratically mandatory debate. Now it wishes to force a parliamentary discussion on how the government should help “Maltese investors in Libya in these turbulent times, without placing new burdens on Maltese taxpayers”.
Are these people for real? Or did some evil wizard conjure them up and inflict them on us as punishment in perpetuity for some past wrongs of which we are not even aware?
They don’t want to rescue people dying at sea. But they want to rescue Maltese business operators who, I imagine, calculated the risks of investing in a country ruled by an ageing murderous dictator and his robber-baron sons – a situation that screamed, in shocking pink neon, ‘UNTENABLE SITUATION – RAKE IT IN NOW BEFORE THE WHOLE THING GOES UP IN FLAMES’.
Drowning escapees from Libya don’t have useful votes, but the rednecks who hate them do. Equally, Maltese business operators and those who work for them have votes too. Ah, but here’s the conundrum: so do all those others who don’t want to be taxed even more heavily to bail out those who built their businesses on sand (in some cases, literally). And the Labour Party can’t afford to upset them.
So, trying to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, it demands that the government helps these business operators BUT without increasing the tax burden. In other words, it has asked the government to divert money from the budgets for, say, health and education to pass that money on instead to Partnership With Seif Gaddafi Ltd.
What a nerve.
I have a much better suggestion. We know now, thanks to the nuisance who writes this blog, that Mutassim and Saadi Gaddafi keep many millions in Maltese banks – and there we were, thinking what super-thrifty savers the Maltese are, every time we read the colossal deposit figures when the statistics are released – and that these many millions are administered by none other than former Labour Party treasurer Joe Sammut.
Karmenu Vella could usefully have a word – eh eh nudge nudge wink wink – and organise a nice big payout to those business operators, disguised as payment for a party in Porto Cervo and a couple of songs by Beyonce. It’s not like the boys are going to notice any time soon. Or ever.
But they’ll have to get round the sanctions first. And come on, Karmenu Vella and Joe Sammut are above that sort of thing. They’re straight as an arrow.
Labour – not fit for purpose.
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“PL motion calls for assistance to Maltese investors in Libya” ( http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110413/local/pl-motion-calls-for-assistance-to-maltese-investors-in-libya.359919 )
First we had Mintoff and the MLP trying to crush successful private enterprises “tal-puliti”; now we have MLP re-branded as “PL”, trying to lick arse the other way round – with other people’s money, yet again.
“We know now, thanks to the nuisance who writes this blog, that Mutassim and Saadi Gaddafi keep many millions in Maltese banks”
Really?
[Daphne – http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/03/01/mutassim-gaddafi-joe-sammut-and-a-party-in-st-barts/
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/03/08/professional-secrecy-doesnt-stop-smokin-joe-from-bragging-he-just-doesnt-want-to-say-whether-the-gaddafis-are-his-paymasters/
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/03/09/tghid-il-pixtu-ta-kurci-jaf-xi-haga-dwar-in-natural-selection-ta-saadi-gaddafi/ ]
Here’s the story of one of the survivors of the boat that arrived on Tuesday and which Muscat says Malta should have ignored “like Italy”.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42562610/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa/
I take it that Karmenu Vella will be declaring his interests when this magical motion is debated in Parliament. I say magical because they want the government to offer help without burdening the taxpayer.
I did a search for “Corinthia” on this page and found nothing. Perhaps Mr Vella can fill in the blank?
People who raise their hand to make a point are usually short.
Will the PL promise to bail me out if I invest in a high-risk high-profit investment and it fails?
How about providing professional crisis counsellors to the business people. Just like what is done after some natural catastrophe, or after a divorce…
Maybe Karmenu Vella can tell us whether he has a vested interest.
Ha! Labour’s new 21st-century paradigm shift: welfare for the investor class, how novel…not (Obama’s been there, still doing it).
Votes, possibly, but more like saving the party’s funders judging by the number of LP fingers in the Libyan pie (now I know what LP stands for).
As for the idea of war for oil…looks like the BIS is up to its old tricks again. I think nuclear physicists weren’t the only professional class saved from the gallows after WW2.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/libya-all-about-oil-or-all-about-banking
So the PL has gone into the business of turning water into wine; if government helps these Maltese investors, taxpayers will have to make good through their taxes.
These Maltese investors kept quiet all through the good times and now that they have hit a bad patch they go wailing to Daddy Government to make good for their losses.
And I note that the motion has been presented by an old Libya hand, Karmenu Vella; has he got any business interests in Libya which he should tell us about? Why is it the the PL/MLP is always playing to the gallery be it the hunters (who are they?), divorce and now Maltese investors in Libya.
I as a taxpayer am invoking the neutrality clause in our constitution and asking the government not to interfere.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/08/libya-crisis-bad-business-tripoli
On the subject of boat-people from Libya, these are worth reading:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8435884/Libya-to-unleash-wave-of-migrants-on-Europe.html
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100082984/gaddafi-floods-europe-with-refugees-this-is-beginning-to-feel-like-the-fall-of-rome/
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/77278,news-comment,news-politics,how-gaddafi-kept-migrants-out-of-eu-at-any-cost-libya-refugees
Interesting reading , I do not believe any one man or political group can withstand the tides of change , it’s just too large a force .
What do you get when you cross Sant with Muscat? http://www.economist.com/node/18483433