Holding public office: they just don’t know what it means

Alfred Grixti, the former Labour Party official who the government appointed to the post of CEO of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, has told The Malta Independent that he is perfectly entitled to say whatever he pleases “outside office hours”.

Is the man nuts, not bright at all, or just totally ignorant of what it means to hold public office? He is the politically-appointed boss of a state foundation, he rants and raves all over his Facebook page – when he shouldn’t even have one – about how the Nationalist MEPs’ refusal to vote for a former Labour minister should be met with Old Testament retaliation, and when criticised he says it’s his constitutional right to express his opinion.

“What I do, say and think outside my normal working hours is my business as long as I do not break any law of the land. Expressing an opinion in any way, shape or form is not, as far as I know, breaking any law. In fact, it is a constitutional right,” he told the newspaper.

Somebody please explain to this Mintoffian nitwit that when you hold public office – when you hold any senior role, even in the private sector, but obviously with public office the implications of what you say and do are greater – you are that role all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, until you resign or are kicked out. The CEO of a state foundation does not cease to be the CEO of a state foundation just because the cocktail hour has arrived, or because it’s Sunday.

These people are so unfit for public office it just makes you want to weep. Imagine the Prime Minister saying something like that on a Sunday and, when taken to task about it, saying “Hey, it’s Sunday. It’s outside office hours. It’s my day off and I’m not the Prime Minister right now. Besides, it’s my constitutional right to express my opinion and I’m not breaking the law.”

Even a skunk like Muscat knows better than to say anything that daft and offensive. I don’t know what’s worse: Grixti’s eye-for-an-eye threats of vengeance, or his claim that he’s within his rights to say whatever he pleases outside office hours.