This has to be the photograph of the week

Published: June 3, 2014 at 6:01pm

carmen ciantar konrad mizzi

Carmen Ciantar, who is still legally Mrs Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando (that four-year hiatus of separation before you’re allowed to divorce has come back to bite him in the behind) with Health and Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi at the announcement this morning of her appointment as CEO of the utilities billing company, ARMS Ltd.

Her husband’s girlfriend, Lara Boffa, is on Enemalta’s board of directors. I wonder how that’s going to play out.

Fascinating.

This photograph, though – it’s so comic.




38 Comments Comment

  1. GiovDeMartino says:

    Who knows? He may send her for an indefinite holiday to Disneyland and give her more than 450 euros daily as pocket money.

  2. Arnold Layne says:

    I doubt that she will realise that the proper thing to do would be to resign from the board at Transport Malta. On the other hand, if she knew what the proper thing was, she probably wouldn’t have taken the ARMS job in the first place.

    • Wilson says:

      As you say, ‘ if she knew what the proper thing was’, she would have not married JPO in the first place. Some people are naturally attracted to disasters.

  3. canon says:

    Joseph Muscat plans his moves well. But one day he will make a false one.

    • Tabatha White says:

      That he hasn’t yet been stopped in his tracks doesn’t detract from the moves being false in the manner they have already been implemented.

  4. Makjavel says:

    Ms Ciantar looks as though she’s going to the gallows with a clown as the hangman.

  5. edgar says:

    The expression on Carmen’s face is priceless.

  6. Typically Labour says:

    Fourth CEO for Arms Ltd within one year?

    Well, it’s either that the board vastly underestimated the job or that it over-rated its appointees big time.

    Or perhaps it’s simply a case where the Board forgot to consult Joseph’s amazing roadmap.

    • Tabatha White says:

      The pre-election influence that Joseph Muscat’s agents in Arms created has left such a humungous mess with the accounts that an unhealthy but steady rotation is required to ensure that any NP account holders never get their accounts righted.

      Knowing that their staged media distractions are such that the NP will take some time before arriving to this item on their list of priorities.

  7. anthony says:

    She looks as if she is just starting a very bad attack of piles.

    He looks as if he has had a bad reaction to the ointment he used for the same condition.

  8. Bella Patria says:

    Four CEOs in 14 months? Is the place haunted, or what?

  9. Ghoxrin Punt says:

    One has to ask. What experience does she have to act as the CEO of ARMS or of any other company, for that matter.

    As far as I was aware, Ms Ciantar was up to 5 years ago an office administrator/clerk at Midi, where she also sold property, followed by a spell in the marketing office of JP Montebello, who went bankrupt, leaving her unemployed then more sales and marketing at Yellow Pages.

    One also wonders what her remuneration is and whether she is on a definite contract or not.

  10. math says:

    Femmenomenali !

  11. gann bello says:

    Perhaps Konrad Mizzi’s wife has divorced him already and we know nothing about it.

    • P Shaw says:

      I don’t think it’s going to be long before the new CEO at ARMS Ltd has wangled herself a cabinet minister for health and energy.

  12. Arnold Layne says:

    Konrad Mizzi is also ageing rather ungracefully. A year ago he was a slip of a thing, but now he’s gone all hefty, like the lot of them. For some reason, he reminds me of The Joker in Batman. Perhaps it’s the bug-eyes.

  13. Sister Ray says:

    “If you ask that question again I’ll cut your bloody balls off”.

  14. M. Cassar says:

    On Times of Malta’s internet edition, people are commenting that these ‘tal-qalba’ appointees should be given time to prove themselves.

    That’s hardly the point, is it. Whether they are up to the job or not is only part of the issue. The main issue is how and why they got the job in the first place: rampant cronyism, rather than a fair and competitive selection process.

    Also, they seem not to understand that trial and error just doesn’t come into it. People appointed at that level should have already proven themselves competent and able, because they can do quite a lot of damage to the organisation they mismanage.

    When incompetents are put in top positions, their lack of knowhow permeates right through all levels of the organisation and lasts way beyond their departure.

    You simply do not take that sort of gamble.

    There is ONE prime advantage of putting someone who is not the logical, in the sense of suited/qualified, person in positions especially top ones; undeserving people would be so grateful for such an appointment that whenever they are asked to act in a certain way by the appointer they can be counted on to comply – no matter how unethical, blatant or unscupulous the request.

    A puppetmaster does not want/need free men. He requires puppets.

  15. Gahan says:

    ARMS Ltd former CEO’s show us that Labour lacks talented people but has a surfeit of billboard people.

  16. gigi says:

    Meritokrazija tal-genn.

  17. Roy says:

    Frank and Betty Spencer from Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em.

  18. giraffa says:

    Couldn’t some journalist present at this announcement have the gall to ask the Minister whether Ms Ciantar’s CV could be made available, and whether a call for applications was made? Otherwise a Press release hand-out would have sufficed. But for our prized journalists, such activities are a good excuse to spend some time out of the office, pick up some fodder information from the ‘event’ and upload it to their readers – useless bunch! And has somebody asked whether Konrad Mizzi’s wife left him as she can’t stand living here and went back to her country with a fat salary just to keep distant and unavailable?

    • Joe Fenech says:

      What’s her background anyway? Many people in Malta have it darn easy.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      Baxxter’s English Lesson Of The Day:

      “Gall” is negative. It’s the same as “effrontery” or “brass neck”. What you should use there is “courage” or something milder (this isn’t Passchendaele after all) like “spunk”. Or simply: “Couldn’t some journalist do their job?”

  19. Renza says:

    And in the meanwhile the country’s citizenship scheme is in the headlines abroad http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27674135

    When will Muscat be presenting his blessed contract with Henley & Partners?

  20. Il-problema hi li fil politka w partikolarment mal-Labour, il-qwalita’ dejjem kienet skarsa. Bniedem relattivament kapaci facli jibbrilla ghax imdawwar b’nies deficenti w/jew opportunisti.

  21. Joanna Kpelafia says:

    Oh a clerk eh?! She must have looked pretty damn beautiful on the Labour Party’s campaign trail to land a job as CEO of ARMS no less.

  22. The Three Monkeys says:

    I think the glum look is probably due to the fact that she has no idea how she is going to fare in this position.

  23. Direct says:

    Why is Konrad Mizzi always photographed the very second someone puts a finger up his arse?

  24. M.Vassallo says:

    Another symptom of the Banana Republic of Malta.

    Ha naraw kemm sejra ddum.

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