That’s what happens when you appoint an arrogant housewife chairman of a Constitutional authority

Tanya Borg Cardona, chairman of the Broadcasting Authority, is all over the news. In an exceptional move, the Broadcasting Authority’s employees have mutinied against her, going on strike, calling in the unions, speaking to the press, appealing to the Prime Minister (who appointed her) to get rid of her, and hitting her with judicial letters.

Now, attempts at mediation have failed. They want to see the back of her and will accept nothing less. And you know what? They’re right. It was bad enough that she was put in charge of that important Constitutional authority in the first place – a housewife in her 60s who hasn’t had a job, let alone a career, since she married in the 1970s, and who left formal education at 15.

That in itself was shocking – a deliberate attempt at degrading the Broadcasting Authority. This is what I wrote about her and her appointment last year. Some people were miffed, and messaged me to say that my piece was unfair, because miskina, she’s so nice and her son died (like that has a lot to do with the price of eggs). But I knew I was correct in my assessment, and now even those people can see it too, given the dreadful outcome a year later.

The first warning sign, other than Mrs Borg Cardona’s complete lack of education, career history of any kind and extremely close links to John Dalli (her long-term boyfriend David Newman worked for him and they both campaigned for Dalli to be elected leader of the Nationalist Party in 2004) was the fact that she accepted the appointment in the first place.

This was blatantly indicative of her unbelievable ignorance and arrogance: ignorance of what the position entails and of her lack of fitness to fill it, and arrogance at thinking that she, a housewife who has done nothing in the last 20 years but buzz around spending Newman’s money and her husband’s money before that, can be chairman of the Broadcasting Authority either because there are no special requirements or because she can do anything.

When these appointments are made, they should be challenged immediately, and especially so by the Opposition whose duty it is to scrutinise them all. If the Opposition thinks that it can let these shocking appointments go by unchallenged – a housewife in her 60s, who left formal education at 15, chairman of the Broadcasting Authority – so that it can appoint its own cronies when its ship comes in (rather than sinks under the full weight of the Demarco ballast), then it deserves all that it gets in terms of criticism.

The government is insanely corrupt in the way it is deliberately undermining institutions with these destructive appointments. But the Opposition is insanely lame in failing to defend those institutions against these appointments – and the employees in those offices against having Dalli and Muscat cronies imposed on them to make their daily lives an utter misery.

The chairman of the Broadcasting Authority