I think it’s time for Konrad Mizzi to stop pretending that he is still married

There is one thing which struck people particularly about the debacle in which the Health and Energy Minister, Konrad Mizzi, finds himself embroiled. Though he is seriously embattled, his wife is nowhere to be seen.

In any marital relationship that is still functioning, no matter how poorly and no matter how great the tensions between the two, basic decency dictates some support in the form of a physical presence – or at least the show of support.

But despite having paid first-class tickets between Malta and China built into her contract agreement, Mrs Mizzi has stayed determinedly away during the worst of her purported husband’s hell. She was not even in Malta and standing at his side in his supposed moment of glory, when he was elected the Labour Party’s deputy leader with 96% of the delegates’ vote.

What should have been his triumph was sabotaged by the revelation that he secretively set up money-laundering structures in Panama, unbeknown to his cabinet colleagues except for the Prime Minister and his chief of staff. Because they were stunned and upset, Mizzi was left to face the cameras and the press alone when his election was announced.

Deserted by his cabinet colleagues and the party big cheeses, who didn’t want to picked up in the camera-frame standing behind him or next to him, Minister Mizzi should have had his wife there at his side at the very least.

This is particularly so given that he brought up the subject of her with the journalists who surrounded him that night. It was a token sop to the public on a really bad night, the general gist being: ‘I may have opened up a company in Panama and shocked you all, but hey, I’ve spoken to Sai and we decided that she will not renew her contract so you can stop fussing about those 13,000 euros a month she’s taking from the public purse.’

The reporters there that night were probably too shell-shocked by the developing scandal to ask the obvious questions: “It’s not for you to make that announcement, is it? It’s for her employer – the Minister of the Economy (Malta Enterprise) or is it the Foreign Minister (consul)?” and “Will Mrs Mizzi be returning to Malta when her contract expires in August?”

I can answer the last one through the experience of life: no, she won’t be coming back. When she left, she left. When a woman packs up her belongings, her children, leaves the marital home, and moves lock, stock and barrel across the world back to her home in China, leaving her husband behind, she doesn’t do it for a job or for her career. She does it because she’s left her husband and wants to put as much distance between them as possible. She does it because she is so very sick of the situation that she no longer cares that her children will be raised without a father.

There wasn’t even a marital home to leave at the time because Konrad and Sai Mizzi and their children had left the substandard flat in Fgura – where this supposed daughter of a Chinese gadzillionaire (what a laugh) had been living – already in the spring of 2013. At the time, they were living in flat 4, Marina Court, near the Hotel Fortina on Tigne Sea Front, which had been loaned to them free of charge by the elderly and rabidly Labour business operator Joe Debono. (Given that Joe Debono is a very common name, some of my readers will know exactly who I mean when I say that he has been Gladys Borda’s companion for many years.)

They lived in this free gift of a loaned flat from a businessman (and this when they made such a scene about Joe Cassar and his ‘favours’ from Joe Gaffarena) while another flat – at 4, Avril Court, a few doors further along the sea front – was refurbished for them.

That flat, too, was owned by Debono and his name remains on the letterbox to this day as photographs I uploaded last month show. The businessman Joe Debono, who is very close to Konrad Mizzi, may well still own the flat at Avril Court where Konrad Mizzi lives now or have ‘donated’ it to the cabinet minister in return for something of which the public knows nothing.

When the cabinet minister moved from 4, Marina Court to 4, Avril Court in the summer of 2013, the cabinet minister’s wife moved directly to Shanghai. And that was that.

I think it’s time they all stopped pretending. And we, the public, have to watch out for what happens next – because it stands to reason that if Mrs Mizzi’s contract with Maltese Enterprise, which weirdly makes her a consul under the Foreign Ministry even though her contract is with the Ministry for the Economy, is not going to be renewed, and she will remain in Shanghai regardless, then they are going to have to find some way of paying her in another form.

The Minister of Health and Energy and Malta Enterprise’s woman in Shanghai, Sai Liang MIzzi, with Han Bin, managing director of Chinese-government-owned Leisure Clothing Ltd, which abuses Chinese, North Korean and Vietnamese indentured labourers on Maltese soil.