Ladies and gentlemen, your government has lied to you. Yet again.

It’s not going to be a university, after all – not even a jack**** American university, because – let’s face it – how could it be?

The thing doesn’t exist. How can something which doesn’t exist get accreditation as a university? It’s bananas.

But the prime minister and his government lied and lied and lied some more, right up until the 11th hour and the debate in parliament last night, when Education Minister Evarist Bartolo let slip – and from what I know of him that underhanded snake will have done it accidentally on purpose – that Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah’s one-man-show, Sadeen Education Investment Ltd (registered at the office address of the Labour Party’s auditor) has not applied for licensing and accreditation as a university, but as an institute of higher education.

In other words, from jack**** pseudo-university to jack**** pseudo-academy/college/whatever – the umpteenth diploma mill for students too thick to get in anywhere else even though their parents have to pay tens of thousands every year for a meaningless piece of paper at the end of it.

The really big shocker here is not how the prime minister lied and lied and lied again, and how his government, with the exception of the backstabbing Varist, followed suit.

No. The truly horrendous shocker is how little the prime minister cares about lying, how it’s all grist to the mill with him, needs must when the devil drives, all’s fair in love and war & c & c.

He cares so little about lying that he allowed – I’d say actively encouraged – that Jordanian outfit to plaster the Commonwealth Heads of Government Business Forum with sponsorship messages that branded their nonexistent ‘AUM – American University of Malta. And that was when he KNEW that it wasn’t going to be anything of the sort.

Now here are some facts to put into perspective Joseph and his mate Hani Hasan and their land-grab plans built on a sea of lies and propaganda sold to an island jam-packed with tragic native islanders gagging to hand over their tribal hunting-grounds in return for a box of beads and a bolt of cloth.

There are currently 23 – yes, that’s correct, 23 – licensed and accredited institutes of higher education in Malta. None of them made a song and dance about setting up here – or rather, the Nationalist government did not make a song and dance about it.

Those outfits took a commercial risk – and it bears reminding you all that these are not educational institutes of the sort of the University of Malta or MCAST, but purely commercial operations run like businesses for profit and no other reason – and went about doing their job. They found their own buildings, organised themselves and did not join the government on a propaganda bandwagon.

It should go without saying that the determination with which this government is pressing on with its plans to give that Jordanian builder – Amman’s equivalent of Sandro Chetcuti – a large tract of seaside land gives rise to suspicion that he has paid very handsomely into the overseas bank account of somebody or various somebodies.

But then, that suspicion lurks over every deal this government has made, including those put out to major tender – especially those put out to major tender.