Joe Gasan and George Fenech = skandlu enormi. The Emir of Qatar? Just fine and dandy.

I listened to the eight o’clock news on TVM tonight and couldn’t believe my ears.

How much worse can it get?

The air ambulance that brought Malta’s Foreign Minister back to Malta from Beijing was provided by the Emir of Qatar, as a gift – not the plane itself, but the flight.

That means that the Emir of Qatar had the air ambulance flown out to Beijing from Qatar and then from Beijing to Malta and thence back to Qatar, at enormous cost.

The public service broadcaster was thrilled to bits – indicating that the government was too – with this bit of news and proudly showed photographs of the Emir’s air ambulance inside and out.

Now excuse me for using upper case but I have had enough: ARE THESE BOONDOCKS BILLIES INSANE?

No member of the government of State 1 should accept gifts of this nature from the government/ruler of State 2. It goes against every norm of behaviour. Why? Because it creates obligations and constitutes patronage.

And in this case, it is much, much worse: the link between Muscat’s government and the Emir of Qatar is one shady character called Shiv Nair, who is permanently blacklisted by the World Bank, who Joseph Muscat put under contract as his consultant back in 2013, and about whom he said, when challenged by the press, that he had no idea of his blacklisting “but would check” (it’s on the World Bank website).

Worse still are the sickening hypocrisy and crazy, but crazy, double standards. When the Finance Minister under the previous government took a trip with businessmen Joe Gasan, his son Mark (currently a director of Electrogas Malta) and George Fenech (since deceased) in the latter’s private plane, to watch a football match, the Labour Party pretended to go ballistic.

They weren’t really shocked, of course, because they have no such standards and principles. I knew that then and now lots of others know it too.

But still they created a scandal for political advantage. They turned up to parliament in football scarves and raised copies of Malta Today with the ‘skandlu’ on the front page, and they kept the item on the scandal agenda right up until the general election three and a half years later. It was huge, because they made it huge.

So it was scandalous for Tonio Fenech to accept the gift of a flight to football match from two Maltese businessmen (it was definitely all wrong), but now it is not scandalous for George Vella to accept the far more onerous gift of an air ambulance flown halfway across the world and back again, from the Emir of Qatar.

Not only is it thought not scandalous, but it is considered something to boast about. “Look how they respect us. The Emir sent an air ambulance for George Vella. U iffrankajna l-flus ghax Malta qatt ma rrifjutat qamh.”

The Opposition should kick up the stink from hell.

And purely as an aside, if the Foreign Minister was not covered by an insurance policy which allows for evacuation by air ambulance if required, then the government of Malta should have paid for it as he was sent to China on government business. Better to pay for the air ambulance yourself than to be beholden to the tyrant of a Gulf State, some glorified camel-trader, or anybody else for that matter, through the good offices of a crook blacklisted by the World Bank.