The government lied about signing an agreement with an American university. It signed today’s agreement with a player in Saudi Arabia construction.

The government has boasted for the last few days that it has reached an agreement with an American university to build a campus in Malta.

It did not produce anybody from any American university to speak to the press. Instead it produced a spokesman for a construction and development company headquartered in Amman, Jordan – Saddeen Group.

The ‘university agreement’ was signed this morning amid much pomp and with an awestruck press that didn’t even bother to ask why no university is party to the agreement, and why the sole signatories are the government of Malta and Hani Saleh of the Sadeen Group, a Jordan-based construction company.

The merest bit of research on the internet – even while waiting for the press conference to begin – would have revealed the telling information that Sadeen Group is a significant player in contracting in Saudi Arabia, and that its sole involvement in ‘education’ is a sideline in international schools (this means schools with an international curriculum and not schools run internationally) at primary level in the Middle East: Mayar International Schools.

So where does the touted DePaul University of Chicago – a fee-paying, private Catholic university – come into the equation? We’re not to know. If it has an agreement with anyone at all, it is with the Saudi Arabia/Jordan construction company which signed an agreement with the Maltese government this morning.

But in that case, it’s between the two of them. The Malta government does not ‘know’ DePaul University in terms of contract law, because its agreement is with Sadeen Group.

Am I the only one who suspects that palms have been crossed with silver somewhere down the line, as the standard way of doing business outside the democratic world?

Have you stopped to wonder why all of this government’s deals are being struck with operators from OUTSIDE the democratic world, for whom bribes and baksheesh are standard practice?

The Maltese government hasn’t signed an agreement with an American university. It has signed an agreement with a Jordanian construction company that is a big player in Saudi Arabia, and has turned over a large parcel of land to it. Ask yourself where, how and why this deal has been struck, and you will reach the natural conclusion that education is not it.

God alone knows what’s changing hands here, even as we cry scandal over Mr Giovanna Debono and his petty village fiddling.