The Nationalist Party should have said this. If it did, I missed it.
This piece below is in The Malta Independent, today. Should it have been AD to say this? The Nationalist Party should have said it too. If it’s worried about having its own political appointees flung in its face by a prime minister who becomes spitefully bitchy when cornered, it needn’t be.
That isn’t the point. The point, as Arnold Cassola says here, is the REPLACEMENT of professionals with amateurs, of career diplomats with Labour Party employees and hangers-on.
That is the reverse of meritocracy.
In view of certain recent diplomatic appointments, AD Chairperson, Prof. Arnold Cassola, said: “Political appointees in the diplomatic domain have unfortunately always been a characteristic of the Maltese two party tribal system. Some of these appointees were and are very valid people, others simply party lackeys.
The novelty now is that some of these political appointees are substituting career diplomats. This is totally unacceptable not only because it is depriving people who are academically and professionally specialised in this field from their deserved advancement in career but also because it is depriving our country of the best people in this area just to satisfy the ambitions and whims of certain party hacks whose only qualification is their servilism towards their political master of the day”.
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I do not think PN have noticed yet. They are still in the mea culpa, mea culpa stage. Apologizing to gays, apologizing to transgender people, apologizing to the 36000.
With the taming of the Lou I even wonder whether Prof Cassola’s very good observation will actually be observed.
Well said, Joseph. I agree fully. They are apologizing to persons who did not vote Nationalist, and at the same time they hurt those many more thousands who voted them in the last election. They are still too much engrossed in the mea culpa syndrome.
Ghal darba naqbel ma Cassola – imma mhux mal AD.
From professionals to amateurs. It seems that the whole structure is like that. Starting from the PL leader and keep going with all the ministries and their top ranks.
As for AD? They broke loose against the PN in government during the election campaign and they had every right. What they should of said was that PL was not the better choice. Who knows? Maybe by the end of this term of government, AD will tell us who out of the two parties was better. I think we deserve this comparison.
Why needn’t the Nats be worried about their own political appointees flung in their faces? They should. This political appointee circus has gone on for far too long. The ambassador to Austria, a hugely able career diplomat, is apparently being removed months after being appointed.
These are not just careers that are being disrupted but whole lives.
Career diplomats suffer years of low pay in the Maltese civil service, which does not adequately compensate their qualifications and experience. When they get the few coveted posts abroad that become available, they uproot their families, find new schools for their children, settle into new homes, and it is not an easy process.
Then to be replaced by a political appointee is just an outrage. No contracted employee would be treated like this. Diplomacy is a profession, but like our civil service, it has been systematically trashed and emasculated by every Maltese government since independence.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130622/local/Ministers-assets-will-be-published-soon-PM-says.474841
The PN parliamentary group seem to be in deep slumber.Why didn’t Simon and Company ask for the declaration of assets of the ministers after two months from the formation of the cabinet?
Why did they leat Joseph get away with this? They should have started breathing down his neck before the two months elapsed.
Coming from “a third party” lends it weight and imparts credibility. Even if it were false, we would all have said that the PN was bound to say it. So it’s just as well that they didn’t, wouldn’t you say?
[Daphne – The PN should still have said it, Reuben, because it had to be said, and this not instead of AD saying it, but besides.]
Wake up Simon, for puck’s sake. Where are the PN people hiding? Stabbing Gonzi in the back must have taken all their time and energy.
…how very true….people like us are actually not represented in Maltese politics right now….
The Labour Party of Malta was always defined by its amateurism.
It wears that badge like a mark of honour.
Then they wonder why Malta gets no respect from bigger nations.
It took us from 1987 to past the Erika oil spill and Gonzi’s time to remove Mintoff’s Banana Republic taint, and in three cruel months we’re right back there.
I get the feeling that the Government considers diplomatic appointments as purely token and ceremonial, roles which can be assumed by any persons who can stand up on two legs and sing the labour anthem by rote.
It seems to forget that malta s ambassadors are its representatives out there and are often the only Maltese whom other members of the diplomatic corps in the same country will meet throughout their assignments.
Quality is crucial if this tiny island’s international image is to be enhanced and not allowed to be dragged in the mud once again. Why replace fine china with Pyrex dishes when they cost the same to maintain? Do our current leaders know the difference?
Have the said appointments been made official?
[Daphne – Not yet.]
Muscat cares not one whit what others think of him. He only wanted to be the youngest PM and that eluded him, in his mind thanks to Gonzi.
Now he and his ilk have five years to grab what they can and hope the switchers can be conned again.
Will people stop coming here for the sunshine because of who is in power?
I still haven’t seen any difference in my day to day lifestyle. The moment I detect any I shall report forthwith.
Prepare yourself, and protect your ‘Balls’.
I think the Nationalists have now recognised and accepted the reason why they lost the elections. And a lot of this was because of the structures they put in place and the people they put in these structures.
One extremely interesting comment I heard the other day is that what has shocked most people (and not those who voted PN but those who voted PL and AD) in the appointment of Bondi, is not so much his appointment, but the fact that a number of people who voted Labour and who sat on state boards and corporations under a PN government have also been arbitrarily removed by Muscat. So yes, PN should have been the first to make this observation.
I also think that PN should now carry out another exercise as part of their electoral defeat. They should be asking the 136,000 Maltese who voted for them, the reason for their vote.
I think they will be surprised to learn that the reason will not be “because I have always voted Nationalist” but because the PN reflects positive values, unlike Labour who are at the moment pandering to the most base characteristics of the Maltese people.