Four freeloading government cronies at a ‘Merry Golt’ Foundation dinner

Here are four freeloading Labour cronies in a photograph that epitomises this government’s cronyism, corruption and trading in influence.

They are Michael Farrugia, Minister for the Family and Social Policy, his girlfriend Amanda Mifsud, who he put on the state payroll with as a full-time director at Identity Malta (her previous experience was as a clerk), his close friend Andy Ellul, a Labour Party activist and policeman-turned-lawyer, who he put on the state payroll as a consultant in a position of trust in his ministry’s secretariat, and Andy Ellul’s girlfriend Claudia Cuschieri, who was transferred from her job as a newscaster with the Labour Party’s television station, Super One, in March 2013 and put on the state payroll, first at the Office of the Prime Minister and later, more conveniently, alongside her boyfriend Dr Andy in Michael Farrugia’s private secretariat.

And guess where they are? At a fund-raising dinner for Mrs Muscat’s ‘Merry Golt’ Foundation. They’re raising money for autism, something that Michael Farrugia’s ministry should be taking care of through the normal process of government alongside Konrad Mizzi’s Ministry for Health, rather than having it depend on Victorian-style ‘cheritee’.

Incidentally, you will notice that one of those hamalli has gone to dinner equipped with an ‘eye-pet’ and has left it on the table, ready to take selfies and pictures of ‘famous in Malta’ people and upload them to Facebook there and then.