Keith Schembri, a backwoodsman from Malta, doesn’t know what normality is

In his statement yesterday, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, businessman Keith Schembri, whose operations in Libya under Muammar Gaddafi have not been explored by the press (clue: Kasco has been officially registering a loss since 2011, the year of the revolution; clue: money paid for business operations under the Gaddafi regime did not have to touch Malta and could go straight to Schembri’s companies in the British Virgin Islands) said that Neil Chenoweth of the Australian Financial Review is targetting him deliberately and under instigation.

I’m afraid that Keith Schembri, raised and living in the Maltese backwoods, and with a 100% backwoods mentality that leaves him feeling threatened and uncomfortable in democratic and civilised environments, is completely out of touch with the reality of life in the democratic world.

The Australian Financial Review is published in a country where the premier of New South Wales resigned because of the gift of a simple bottle of wine. Just imagine, then, how he must regard a cabinet minister and a prime minister’s chief of staff who set up secret companies in Panama and secret trusts in New Zealand, and a prime minister who behaves as though all this is perfectly normal and acceptable.

In this issue, as in all others, Maltese society is divided between those of us whose values belong to the democratic world, and those whose values belong to the less civilised parts of the globe. And many of those of us who are in the former category understand full well that Malta is perceived as a bizarre island that is officially part of Europe but in reality not part of it at all, that it exists in isolation as a toxic bubble and so is held to different standards in the same way that the countries of the Middle East and North Africa are.