When you grow up in the Zejtun Labour Party club, you don’t know the meaning of democracy

The Opposition has asked the Prime Minister for documentation to prove that he paid for his own family holiday at the very pricey Hotel Atlantis the Palm in Dubai over Easter. The Prime Minister has so far refused. He considers it none of our business to know who paid for his family’s holiday and, if he paid for it himself, how much it cost.

But both matters are of public interest. The Prime Minister should not be accepting expensive gifts and hospitality, still less for his entire family, and if he paid for it himself, this still raises questions because his wife doesn’t work, they have two children at an expensive private school, and his only declared income is his salary.

But Ramona Frendo, the lawyer who featured on Labour Party billboards and in its official campaign video in the last general election, doesn’t think so. Interviewed on TVM’s Dissett last night, she said: “Jekk se noqgħodu nsaqsu għal invoices fuq ġita li għamel il-Prim Ministru, se noqgħodu nsaqsu għal irċevuta wara li jieħu drink issa?”

It is at moments like these that you can tell how somebody took her lessons in democracy from the Zejtun Labour Party club where she grew up because her mother ran it. And all the social and material evolution of her adult years, including some very hard work on changing her accent even in her native Maltese (well done for that; some people would never know) have done nothing to change the fundamentals – which is where it really, but really, shows.