And what about that Mrs Konrad Mizzi, eh?

Published: September 30, 2013 at 3:10am
"I heard your wife is b*ggering off back to Shanghai." "You heard right, but the second bit of good news is that I don't have to pay for it - the sucker public is doing that."

“I heard your wife is b*ggering off back to Shanghai.” “You heard right, but the second bit of good news is that I don’t have to pay for it – the sucker public is doing that.”

So first we are told that Mrs Konrad Mizzi has been engaged by Malta Enterprise and will be representing Malta Enterprise in business development in Asia.

Then, when Malta Enterprise directors speak (anonymously) to the press saying that normal recruitment procedures were not followed, that the appointment was not discussed at board level as it should have been, and that they found out about it through the media, we get a different story.

The new story is that Mrs Konrad Mizzi is not working for Malta Enterprise, after all. She is “a Malta government envoy with the status of an ambassador”, and she will be based in Shanghai for three years with the salary, terms, conditions, perks and privileges of an ambassador.

So basically, Malta now has two ambassadors to China – and both of them have Chinese passports.

The rest of the new story tells us that Mrs Konrad Mizzi was not engaged by Malta Enterprise, but given a direct government appointment. Malta Enterprise came into it because they negotiated her contract. So why didn’t Malta Enterprise’s directors know about it? “Because it was negotiated directly by the office of the chairman”.

In other words, Mario Vella and Mrs Konrad Mizzi worked it out between them.

We now have to ask whether Mrs Konrad Mizzi, if she is going to be working at all in Shanghai rather than taking a paid pre-divorce break from her strange husband, financed by the Maltese public, will be working for the Maltese government or for the Maltese prime minister’s special consultant, Shiv Nair, China’s business agent in the less democratic parts of the world.




17 Comments Comment

  1. Nanna kola says:

    his is a disgrace and it’s time people spoke out. Because people voted them into power, it doesn’t mean they can do whatever they want. I was out with people who voted for them and they are already saying no more Labour.

  2. SHAME ON YOU DR MIZZI

  3. Infurmat says:

    Haven’t you read Mario Cutajar’s interview in The Sunday Times? Its all perfectly normal. Everyone has a right to use his professional skills irrespective of his political sympathies.

    Well, that was the case under the Nationalists, but definitely not now.

    Mario Cutajar is chief of the civil service now because the first thing the Labour government did was blow Godwin Grima, a career civil servant and Malta’s topmost one, out of his post, so that the Labour Party’s customer care officer, Cutajar, could replace him.

  4. a big ? says:

    Bikkewna dawn in-nies. U X’tahwid.

  5. anthony says:

    I just cannot get over this.

    So the guy gets rid of his wife for three years, at least.

    I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid had he not had the cheek to expect me to foot part of the bill.

    [Daphne – Got rid of his wife? I rather suspect it’s the other way round.]

    • Paul Bonnici says:

      I wish I lived in Shanghai, it’s an exciting city.

      • John Schembri says:

        You’re not missing anything. In Shanghai you can get run over on a pedestrian crossing even when the signals are on for cars to stop.

        Forget your privacy on the internet in China. There’s the Great Firewall of China which will tell you that some website which you tried to enter is forbidden and if you still want to enter it, send an email explaining why you want to access it.

        I’ve seen workers being sent ‘home’ without pay because there was a power cut. I know of others working for a Maltese clothing company who didn’t get any wages for a whole three months. They have no sick leave.

        I’ve seen a driver who was a member of the Communist Party, humiliating his manager who was an engineer and delaying our travelling plans by his actions.

    • anthony says:

      Let’s just assume they consensually got rid of each other.

      I still cannot fathom why I had to get involved.

      Maybe it’s because of taghna lkoll.

  6. PWG says:

    Mrs. Mizzi, holding a Chinese passport and operating from ‘home’, will earn €2000 a week plus perks, when the minimum wage in China is €45 a week. She hasn’t done too badly.

  7. pablo says:

    The whole point here is that all on the government benches now justifiably expect to do as well as Comrade Konrad and Comrade Sai. So there’s more and worse to come.

  8. Infurmat says:

    Mizzi’s energy plan…………

    Dumping of Chinese PVs on the European market:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24327405

  9. J. Agius says:

    The attitude now is “dan huwa l-gvern taghna…..naghmlu li rridu!!”. Forget all that was said pre-election and all the ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude. Typical Labour.

  10. Sue says:

    Will Mrs. Mizzi be issuing visas for entry into Malta? All this is so unbelievable – we’re like a corrupt sub-Saharan African state, again.

  11. rpacebonello says:

    Surely her loyalty is to the country of her birth, rather than to the country she came to because of the husband she no longer seems to want, and from which she has done a runner.

  12. TROY says:

    I wonder how all those people feel who voted for Muscat.

    They voted for change and found instead that they had voted to get Mrs Konrad Mizzi a job, home and salary back home in Shanghai.

  13. This appointment has been messed up.

    The envoys engaged before were of a different nature altogether. They were unpaid and worked from their own offices. No one has made any mention that they had any diplomatic status.

    Could we be told whether Mrs Mizzi and her office will enjoy diplomatic status and immunity? If in the affirmative, is there the agreement of the other countries in which she will be operating? Will she be accountable to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and what will be her relationship to our ambassador in Beijing?

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