Dictator friends of the Maltese government: an update
Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian autocrat deposed a few days ago and now on the run in Russia: he was to have visited Malta three months ago to be decorated by the Maltese president and received by the Maltese government.
Hot on the tail of news that the daughter of the corrupt Azerbaijan dictator, who rigs elections to stay in power, has been feted and hosted by Malta’s head of state and entertained by the Maltese prime minister’s wife at Girgenti Palace, we have reports that Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed autocrat of Ukraine who went on the run last Saturday after being forced out of power by a revolution, has taken refuge at a sanatorium in the Kremlin.
Yanukovych’s last international foray was to be a trip to Malta three months ago to be decorated with our highest honour, the Gieh ir-Repubblika. He was to be met at the airport by Economy Minister Chris Cardona, the rationale presumably being that the second Mrs Cardona is Ukrainian.
He took a raincheck on that trip because of his problems back home, even though Malta’s foreign minister, on a visit to Ukraine a little earlier and just as the riots and demonstrations broke out, claimed on his return to Malta that he had heard and seen nothing except, you know, a few students shouting and so on, nothing to worry about and certainly nothing out of the ordinary.
A few minutes ago, the Associated Press reported:
Report: Ukraine’s Yanukovych in Moscow
By Associated Press
MOSCOW — A respected Russian news organization has reported that Ukraine’s fugitive president, Viktor Yanukovych, was seen in a Moscow hotel and was now staying in a Kremlin sanatorium just outside the city.
The RBK report was impossible to confirm, but security at the Ukraina Hotel was unusually heavy late Wednesday, with police watching from parked vehicles outside and guards posted throughout the lobby. Some of Yanukovych’s allies, also reported to have been at the hotel, may have still been there.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/report-ukraines-yanukovych-in-moscow/2014/02/27/71bcbb4a-9f92-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html
Michelle Muscat is such a social climber that she would take on any opportunity she thinks would help her. The sad thing about people like her is that they have no bloody idea. What an embarrassment she is to our country.
Everything about her (look, hair arrangement, posture, carriage) screams “servile.”
If Malta was a normal country based on meritocracy, Michelle Muscat would have been a typical factory worker on the assembly line.
I believe this guy made it to the record books. He must be the only autocrat that ended up being removed from office twice.
He’ll be getting a passport instead of a medal now probably.
The Ukrainian parliament has voted to have Yanukovych tried at the International Criminal Court.
I don’t think that will have a bearing on his “due diligence”. We can build a block of flats for social housing with the money we get off him and his family if he gets himself a Maltese passport.
Min jaf forsi japplika għaċ-ċittadinanza u jsir Malti bħalna.
Security was pretty heavy around a penthouse in Xemxija earlier this week. Maybe Yanukovych was visiting. Or was it one of the Aliyevs? Or maybe it was just another commonplace Chinese billionaire
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sale-of-Maltese-citizenship-how-the-world-sees-it/176956612500193?ref=hl
George Vella’s assessment of the situation in Ukraine just a few weeks ago was brilliantly accurate, wasn’t it. Is it possible that the MLP has no one better to fill the post of Foreign Minister and assess a situation for what it really is?
They can play musical chairs, but the players are the same and so is the music.
Labour on the wrong side of history, as usual.
All that remain are Robert Mugabe and Chavez’s blue fatigues wearing successor.
Yanukovych’s been indicted of ordering the murder of over seventy demonstrators, Putin’s just ordered a number of armoured divisions to group at the border.
His country ‘residence’ turned out the usual tacky gold-plated everything, tons of documents, transactions and money trails fished from the frozen pond.
Ghidli kif taghmel xahrek u nghidlek x’int.
There’s Dom Mintoff’s lots on auction this week, seven hundred of them. I’m under strictest instructions to refrain from my periodic tendency to kitsch.
Amongst others, ‘riding and smoking gear’. What, no speedos?
Daphne, you might have missed this because it was reported when you were away.
Last week, George ‘Alla ħares nidħlu fl-Ewropa’ Vella urged the world not to impose sanctions on Ukraine and tried to imply that the protesters were as violent as the government forces.
As a commenter said under this article, ‘Labour: always on the wrong side of history.’
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140219/local/malta-calling-for-dialogue-as-ukraine-situation-worsens.507475
Dictator? You seem to forget that Yanukovych was elected four years ago.
Here is a more realistic take on the Ukrainian crisis: http://www.activistpost.com/2014/02/the-winners-of-ukraine-revolution.html
So was Joseph Muscat elected, just under a year ago.
The conditions that produce an election result, democratic as the process may have been, are no guarantee of what ensues.
A democratic prime minister operating in a true democracy should be serving the nation and not the interests of his own party, a foreign power, or quite bluntly his own and those of his business associates jointly.
The level of transparency by which that government operates would be but one indicator.