Need she travel to her (Chinese) family home?

Heq, they have to make up for the decades they’ve been in Opposition. Now they’re out to party, bil-goff kif jafu huma.

The Minister should be asked by journalists if he has any financial interests, jobs, consultancies, remuneration from China, whether from the Chinese government or from any other private employer whether Chinese or otherwise based in China, or from his private interests there. He should be asked if he has any contracts of service or contracts for service with any Chinese entity.

If Mr. and Mrs. Mizzi had separated, then, most probably, she would be allowed to go. These things happen in real life – relations break down, and the former husband and wife go their separate ways.

If this was the case, there wouldn’t seem to be any reason why she should be given a package of Euro 13,000 per month, simply because she is unhappy with her marriage and wishes to go back home.

But the existence of such package suggests otherwise. The package suggests that the relationship is still important. Very important.

So is this package hiding an element of indirect remuneration to the Minister? And if that is the case, why would that be in the case of this particular Minister?

Besides, no Minister should allow a situation to arise in which his wife is subjected to such close scrutiny by the media. When such scrutiny happens, it means that something is wrong. In this case, it is the employment of the Minister’s wife by the government that is wrong.

Are we sure that this ‘posting’ of Mrs. Mizzi Liang is not an excuse so that the Minister can travel back and forth to China under the disguise of family trips, whereas the truth is that instead he is based in China and is somehow serving Chinese interests in Malta while also pretending to occupy the position of Minister of the government?

The conflict of interest of gargantuan proportions in which the wife of the Minister of Energy is Chinese and she is assigned to attract business from China, while the Minister is overseeing a transaction involving the injection of “tens of millions” of cash from China into a corporation which falls under his direct responsibility makes the situation more susicious.

In a European democracy we have the right to ask these sort of questions about public persons. This arrangement in which the Minister is separated from his wife while they both serve the Labour government of Malta just doesn’t make sense.

This is a Labour government we have. “Stennew minn kollox.”