This interview tells you all you need to know about how highly China rates Muscat and Malta
And also that Muscat’s aides are not doing their job properly. Look at the context of this interview (and context is all). Muscat looks as though he is being interviewed in the boxroom at China Daily.
Instead of going to Muscat, and conducting the interview in what Saviour ‘Marquesa de Varela’ Balzan called “the lavishness of his private quarters” – which is the location to which Maltese journalists were summoned for their audience with the prime minister – China Daily asked him to go to them.
He is filmed and interviewed without the stage-setting that signifies the interviewee is important, the interview is significant, and China Daily feels fortunate to have access.
Muscat is shown in tight, casual close-up like some student-leader interviewed about his latest cause at the university. His interviewer is a junior reporter who has clearly been pulled away from his desk, shabbily dressed with a tie quickly and loosely knotted over his casual shirt. But Muscat has turned up in a suit and is clearly nonplussed at the downgrade.
Muscat’s aides should have managed this situation a whole lot better. Better no interview at all than this interview which shows exactly where he ranks in China’s scale of priorities and importance.
Would Angela Merkel have been treated like that? Would David Cameron? No and no.
18 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
I love the look on the young reporter’s face. It demonstrates contempt and not admiration.
It just proves that the PM is there for the gaxin.
Muscat had no choice in the matter. What China says, Muscat does.
Muscat was in China to promote China’s policy.
Well….what the heck.
What? The Super One hack?
He could have spoken in Malti and got Sai to translate for a few extra yen.
He looks like a naughty Cheshire cat who has just sold his nation to the dogs. He knows that what he did is bad and evil but what the heck, as long as the end justifies the means and he got himself richer in the process.
Muscat is making a terrible mistake. He seems to think that our vulnerability and minor role on the global scene that makes us small players and therefore not really in the press much is our useful card to play.
In Malta’s case, since no one in the world really cares about what happens here (or so people think) and since what goes on in Malta isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, we should then make use of our stealth and appeal to those undemocratic powers who are looking for exactly that type of ignored and vulnerable individual to prey on.
This is a terrible attitude to have. Our status in the world is what makes our acts of cooperation and good will that much more spectacular. As in the situation in North Africa not so long ago, our eagerness to help and assist was seen as unexpected and received brilliantly by everyone, the US included.
But then think back to Muscat’s attitude, “We should take advantage of the situation and take their tourists”.
The reason I think is simple. That age old story of “If people think that they can get away with something they most likely will” applies here. Muscat does not see Malta in the context of the world, but as an under the radar, no body will notice, rat that can and therefore should allow bigger players to abuse of us.
By doing so Muscat is only reenforcing that inferiority complex myself and so many of my generation grew with. It’s Malta, so no body cares about us.
It was only in my late teens, early twenties that I began to feel proud of Malta because of what it offered its people, and how it was being received throughout Europe and the world.
But that is changing quickly. Just the other day someone whom I had just met asked me, “So how much does a Chinese person have to pay to become Maltese?”. I had no choice but to agree with him that it is ridiculous and begging him to believe me what I said that not all Maltese people like the situation.
Incidentally, many people in the UK who are over the age of 50 seem to know all about Mintoff. I’ve met quite a few who admitted they were apprehensive about mentioning him because, ” he seemed to admired by the Maltese, but was a rather unpleasant person”. Again, I have to say that I agreed. Labour is still a stain on Malta’s reputation.
I loved Muscat’s tie. Is that blue silk?
It’s dyed-in-the-wool hypocrisy. He still thinks that the people associate his now stale light-blue tie scam as some form of moderate socialism. It now represents corruption, mediocrity and cronyism.
In the style of the Lunar Landing conspiracies – the interview was not conducted in China – but undertaken in a TV studio (by the looks of it at the Smash TV premises).
It looks like this was a really rushed job. In other videos the reporter is well groomed and is usually interviewing a head of industry or an ambassador.
Did someone from the Malta delegation have a hissy fit and demand an interview?
Could that explain the look of contempt on the interviewer’s face?
And can somebody please give our PM some lessons in posture. He looks bad enough standing like a bouncer at the entrance to a club when invited to a ‘family’ photo – I’m being polite – but lying back in that chair as though he were on some deckchair is less than becoming.
” … at the footstep of Africa … “
A Euro Vision Song Festival winner dedicated to Joseph Muscat – Puppet On A String.
The trouble is that the “cup” he’s getting us is more reminiscent of the hemlock drunk by Socrates than a trophy!
Dak ir-reporter nahseb aktar kien mohhu fil-gallettini li d-duo Keith u Joseph poggewlu fuq il-mejda bhal ma jaghmlu hawn lil-gurnalisti Maltin. Insomma interview ta sodd it-toqba, l-aqwa li jintervistawh tac-China TV. Jien niskanta kif il-Prim ma libisx ggieget tan North Face biex ihajjar miljuni ta’ Cinizi jixtru l-prodotti minn Malta u jqalla kemmxejn lil-siehbu. Business sense fejn irid.
Gozo 2018:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/72917000/jpg/_72917441_020035762-1.jpg
The man clearly doesn’t know his history, or perhaps he just likes to re-write it. At 05:15 he says in Malta we have the oldest buildings in the world. France’s oldest building pre-dates the Maltese ones by a mere 1000 years.
China’s got a bitch in the EU