No hope of striking oil? Turn to China for cash.
When the British gave Mintoff a reverse salute, laughed in the face of his begging them to renew their lease on their military base in Malta, then packed up and sailed out of Grand Harbour, leaving him saddled with a dry-docks workforce of thousands, no military work and no money to pay them, he turned to the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi for cash with strings attached.
Now history is repeating itself.
Bereft of other ideas and options, and having failed to strike oil, Mintoff’s successors have turned to the Chinese dictatorship for cash with a “five-year deal that covers most aspects of Malta’s economy” (I quote the prime minister) and will have so many web-like strings attached that not even Spiderman will be able to extricate us.
Third-World thinking passed off to the electorate as liberal and progressive – and just as a matter of interest, isn’t it fascinating how this government is concerned only with the human and civil rights of those who can actually vote for it? I wonder what those people celebrating civil unions on Palace Square think of the human rights violations committed routinely by the new best friends and bank-rollers of the government they support?
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Reply to ken il malti Click here to cancel reply
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140703/local/oil-well.526073
As for me, I wonder what the Opposition thinks of Malta’s new best friend. Last time round, they seemed rather too keen on opportunitajiet ta’ investiment barrani. The Maltese are a mercantile people. Principles are easily swayed by money.
A new version of the Manchurian Candidate, starring Joseph Muscat. Do not think for a moment that the Chinese are interested in Malta: they are interested in Malta’s votes in the Council of the EU.
‘Bereft of other ideas and options, and having failed to strike oil,…’
Oh no, look at the timeline, oil was just an explanation (read pie in the sky) to get votes pre-election. Some would have been concerned if multiple agreements with China had been mentioned and thought twice about voting Labour.
Oil was the ‘we’ll see about getting a dog if you are good’ you would tell your child to get him to co-operate!
As I said, look at the timeline.
Now that the British consortium has failed to find oil in Malta the Chinese will have a go.
Ha ha, better give the drilling concession to the Russians then, as they are reputed to be experts at ultra long depth oil drilling.
http://www.rense.com/general75/zoil.htm
Is Norman Lowell still making jokes about “golf courses for some Mr Chung”?
Anyone remembers this?
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20061107/local/mp-promises-to-resign-if-no-oil-is-found-under-mlp-government.36075
And Joe Mizzi told us that he knows for certain where to find oil.
The prime minister touched upon quite a number of important issues during this morning’s business lunch.
However, may I ask why on earth he had to include the Angela Jolie bit – stating that her film will be nothing short of a ‘block-buster’? Already a ‘block-buster’ folks!
Is Malta such a minimal entity that it takes the prime minister to announce that a film company will be shooting one of its (presumably many) productions at Mgarr ix-Xini?
Perhaps the prime minister was turning to a lighter subject to relieve the concern that some of his other pronouncements had raised before.
You are wrong about Mintoff asking for aid from Gaddafi after the British left.
[Daphne – No, Gahan, I am right. Mintoff turned to Gaddafi for help in March 1979, and Gaddafi was – in fact – the only foreign head of state/government present for the flag-lowering ceremony in Birgu, accompanied by a shipload of Libyans who made their presence felt heavily. What happened in the autumn of that year was the inevitable consequence of Mintoff putting himself at the mercy of a bloody dictator who had bought him and who also knew Malta no longer had a British military base. But the man, as I have said repeatedly, was not bright at all despite the myth to the contrary, and made a succession of really poor decisions. Pushing the envelope too far in negotiations with the British to try to get more money out of them was one such catastrophic decision: he wound up with no money at all, because they said ‘look, we don’t need this’ and left. Putting himself at the mercy of Gaddafi, a beggar at his table, was another such bad decision. And we know the consequences of that, including the one you describe here.]
In the autumn of 1979 two Libyan gunboats threatened the Saipem Due oil rig with their guns, and there was no one to defend us. The British forces had left the island on 31 March that year and Mintoff told his party faithful at the Baviera mass meeting that Libya committed an act which is only done by one’s worse enemies “Att ta’ l-akbar għadu”.
TThe Nationalists a week later were chanting “U waħħalulu u Gaddafi waħħalulu!”
From then onwards, all ties were broken with Libya, until one day a young Saif Gaddafi appeared on a plane in Malta and Mintoff handed him two goats as a present to his father Muammar.
[Daphne – You are very wrong about all ties being broken with Libya. This was the period when the intense relationship with Libya began, including compulsory Arabic in schools, children being presented with copies of the Green Book, a heavy presence for the Libyan Cultural Institute, and Sliema literally over-run by Libyan ‘students’ from the school at Ta’ Giorni. And let’s not forget something more important: some of those Libyan ‘students’ murdered in their rooms by the classic Gaddafi method of hanging, murders which were then passed off as suicide with the cooperation of the Maltese police who ‘knew better’ than to press home with their investigations.]
The old lie of the gunboat incident, passed off as history. There isn’t enough firewood to burn Dominic Fenech and Henry Frendo in effigy.
Investment with China is one thing but to actually sign away businesses and property to a country where civil rights are a joke, there is no democracy and human rights violations are the norm is really scraping the bottom of the political barrel, and this a year after a landslide electoral victory.
Then, on the other hand this may all have been a front, perhaps the victory had such superficial factors that we are now seeing the initial stages of desperation.
Didn’t Joe Mizzi say that he would resign if drilling for oil fails to produce any results?