A government of irresponsible bums, turning Malta into their corrupt fiefdom

The Malta Independent reports this afternoon that Karl Cutajar, the 18-year-old kid put in sole control of the government’s new guard and security company, Fort Security Services Ltd, is Mario Azzopardi’s nephew.

Azzopardi is ‘chief of staff’ (which means head of secretariat) to Chris Cardona, the Minister for the Economy under whose aegis Fort Security Services Ltd was incorporated.

That a government minister should put his chief of staff’s nephew in charge of any state company or organisation is textbook corruption and, quite literally, nepotism – the word is derived from the French for nephew and owes its origins to the 17th-century practice of installing the nephews of popes in grace-and-favour positions.

That the nephew in question is just 18 and the company he controls will be responsible for the security of all public buildings pushes the scenario into the league of Gaddafi-esque despotism, where extreme corruption converges with extreme delusion, arrogance and madness.

‘Not fit for purpose’ no longer adequately describes this government. Now I would say that it is actually a danger to society. It knows no norms, no parameters, and it uses the letter of the law to smash its spirit.

Of course it is not illegal to put an 18-year-old or a crony or a nephew in charge of a state company, even a state company that will be responsible for providing security at all public buildings. But normal people know why it shouldn’t be done. It is only people who see things as Muammar Gaddafi did who think it perfectly acceptable and desirable to treat state organisations as vehicles for sons, brothers and nephews in their teens and 20s.

Chris Cardona said of Karl Cutajar in parliament last night: “His age is irrelevant as long as he is legally qualified to hold the role.”

No, you corrupt man, of course not. His age, his identity, his connections to your chief of staff and his level of competence are all not just relevant but crucial.

Labour backbencher Anthony Agius Decelis compounded the tragic mess by backing him up and saying: “This appointment shows the government’s trust in young people.”

No, what this appointment shows is the government’s madness, corruption and total lack of responsibility. No 18-year-old should be put in charge of the security of public buildings. He is a sitting-duck for criminals.

No nephew of the minister’s chief of staff should be put in control of a state company in the minister’s portfolio, whatever his age, because that is corruption and nepotism.

No cabinet minister should ever seek to justify actions like this, because it makes him look not just corrupt but also detached from reality to the point of madness, with absolutely no concept of wrong or right.

This is going to sound all wrong, but the truth is that, unpleasant and non-politically-correct as it may sound, the fact is that Mediterranean peasant culture is hallmarked – the anthropologists will bear me out on this – by amoral pragmatism. People whose mindset is formed by a culture of amoral pragmatism literally cannot understand the concepts of right and wrong or the common good. They can only distinguish between jaqbilli and ma jaqbillix.

The Labour Party is made up mainly, and supported mainly by, people who think like this. The inevitable has happened: government by amoral pragmatism. The rest of us are horrified, even those who – carried away by the enthusiasm of the time – supported Taghna Lkoll.