“Deo came with me because this is not a government of ministers”
Deo Debattista, the Labour backbencher who was included at the negotiating table in China, and who took his wife along on the trip.
Questioned in parliament as to why the foreign minister was not part of the official Malta government delegation to China, while humdrum backbencher Deo Debattista was and even sat at the negotiating table, the prime minister said (I quote Times of Malta):
Dr Muscat said the foreign minister had not accompanied him because of a meeting of ambassadors in Malta. Dr Debattista had accompanied him because this was not just a government of ministers.
So we are expected to believe that the foreign minister and the prime minister are incapable of having their aides juggle their diaries so that important events don’t clash.
I don’t believe it.
As for the reason given for Deo Debattista’s presence – “this is not a government of ministers” – it just beggars belief. The cabinet of government is made up of ministers. In Malta, for some reason, parliamentary secretaries, who are junior to ministers and accountable to them, are also considered part of the cabinet.
Is Debattista a member of the cabinet of government? No. He is a backbencher. He wasn’t there because the prime minister has conjured up a new form of government outside the Constitution and the laws of Malta that is made up of people who are not ministers and not in the cabinet.
So we need to know the real reason why. Watch that space, because there has to be a reason why he was included so strangely. He’s either going to be directly involved in some Chinese project, or he’s been kicking up a stink about something a la Franco Debono and was taken along as a sop to make him feel important and special.
So it’s a matter of working out what the project is or what Debattista’s discontent is about.
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I thought his answer would be “Didn’t GonziPN take Franco Debono to New York for the UN meeting?”
[Daphne – That’s exactly the comparison I had in mind, myself.]
That one must have got past them.
I don’t think so. I think that there is more trouble internally than we know and using the Franco Debono comparison would have been an implicit admission that there is “internal negativity” within PL.
An occasion in which the PM can say “Deo gratias”.
The PM is, yet again, lying.
Is anybody surprised?
It is pretty obvious to all, except the vast majority who happen to be intellectually challenged, that the Foreign Secretary must have had a VERY good reason not to go to China. He happens to be a much cleverer man than he appears to be.
We will never know the real reason because of national security interests, obviously.
You overestimate the man who said last year that nothing’s happening in Kiev.
He said the same thing this week about Libya.
By including Deo Debattista in his delegation to China, Joseph Muscat was copying his mentor and idol Dom Mintoff.
The group Mintoff took with him to China included a certain John Dalli – no, not the one in the news at the moment. When anyone asked why that John Dalli was part of the delegation, the mocking answer was “the Prime Minister needed a porter to carry his bags”.
Carmelo Abela was in Muscat’s delegation last year. I’m told he accompanied the prime minister to an international meeting in Dalian while Kurt Farrugia was shut out.
Didn’t somebody here mention the possible involvement of Deo Debattista in some institute of traditional Chinese medicine at the general hospital, or maybe in the country generally?
The subject of traditional Chinese medicine was mentioned in the “ground-breaking” MOU signed in Tienanmen Square in the presence of Saviour ‘Peking Duck’ Balzan and other ‘selected’ Maltese media.
Maybe he is a nice guy
Dear Daphne,
Dr Debattista, was appointed chairman of the Occupational Health and Safety Authority about a year ago. For some years now, it has been in need of more field officers, but he has thought it more important to appoint a personal assistant, on the authority’s payroll, who has never shown his face there, and also a messenger/clerk whose working day amounts to just two hours on the premises. The rest of the day, he just vanishes and cannot be found.
Both of them were handpicked with no interviews or advertised vacancies.
What are their names?
How can an authority function when it has a complement of 24 workers, 7 of which have the rank of director in the civil service, 4 middle management and 6 clerks, 2 messengers and 4 field officers?
Isn’t Dr Deo the Muscats’ family doctor?
Was not all the Muscat family in China too?
Need I remind everyone that “Doktorr Deo” became a household name on Xarabank?
The fount of all evil doesn’t even begin to describe it.