Who are all those people? The Department of Information hasn’t told us.

Is it ignorance or something else that would have the government’s Department of Information release photographs of the signing of a deal between the government of Malta and a Jordanian construction company, yesterday, without a caption informing the media who all those people are?

And did any of the journalists present think to ask for the introduction they failed to get, or did they assume, as tends to happen in situations like this, that the people were props who are of no investigative interest?

Every single person in a line-up like that is there for a reason, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the picture. So finding out who they are and why they are there is important.

We can recognise the prime minister, the environment minister (Leo Brincat), the economy minister (Chris Cardona) and the education minister (Evarist Bartolo), the parliamentary secretary for the simplification of administrative processes (Michael Falzon), and we were given the name of the man signing on behalf of the Jordanian construction company, Sadeen Group. But who are the others and why are they there?

We know why Leo Brincat is there. It’s to tell us that the Minister for Fancy Fishponds and Chinese Gardens hasn’t objected to the way a large parcel of public land in an Outside Development Zone has been signed away to a Middle Eastern construction magnate with significant intersts in Saudi Arabia.