Valletta shop owners: if you want to petition Chris Cardona, you’ll find him at The Stable
They promise the shop-owners of Merchants Street that the shabby market will no longer be set up there after the general election. At the same time, they promise the stall holders that they will be able to set out their wares around Parliament House after the general election.
They tell the general public nothing of the details, and when the stall markers begin to go into the ground around Parliament House, and more so when the appalling stall design is made public, there is an outcry so great that Chris Cardona has to beat a hasty retreat in between afternoons spent at The Stable and Frankie Grima’s City Lounge.
So then they tried to squash all the stalls into Ordnance Street, around that pub run by Marlene ‘Campaigning for Joseph’ Seychell’s ex husband Carlo (who was furious). When they realised there were too many stalls to fit, they tried to buy some off. But the stall holders realised that they had all the leverage because the government is desperate, so they held out.
Then it was back to the drawing-board. Now we discover that the government has chosen to keep the stall holders happy, after reneging on its promise to them before the general election, by reneging on its promise to some other people: the shop-owners of Merchants Street.
