GUEST POST: Some of Muscat’s own brand of negativity

I woke up thinking about Muscat’s negativity which he has wrapped up and gifted to a gullible electorate as positive energy.

Exercising a basic democratic right and duty which is an essential part of democracy – scrutinising and criticising government – has now been rebranded as ‘negativity’.

And in the rush to be fashionable and on the winning side, Muscat’s acolytes and new converts are spreading his religion, undermining themselves in the process.

Tens of thousands can’t be wrong? Of course they can. Hitler’s supporters applauded when the Bundestag was bombed. Who was negative – those who bombed the Bundestag, those who applauded Hitler’s action, or those who opposed him?

This is not to make the outrageous comparison of Muscat to Hitler, but an exercise in testing the soundness of this argument by taking it to its logical extreme.

Shady connections

Muscat’s relationship with World-Bank-blacklisted British citizen Shiv Nair had been questioned long before Malta Enterprise engaged him as a consultant as formal cover for his long-standing relationship with the Labour Party and with Joseph Muscat in particular.

Muscat repeatedly denied he had any connection with Nair, even though there were several eyewitness who saw them together at the theatre during a musical performance – they were in the same box – and also at dinner in a restaurant.

Several times, even before he was elected, Muscat ignored or avoided questions in parliament and by the media on the matter of Mr Nair, but in the end, he had to back down and cancel Nair’s official appointment. Or at least, he told us he did. Even though Nair is not completely out of the picture, Muscat’s cancelling his contract under pressure from criticism, or rather the need he felt to tell us that he did, is not negative. It’s positive. And criticism which achieves a positive end is not negative or negativity.

Muscat’s unaccountability

There’s another controversial Malta Enterprise appointment, but this one is clearly there to stay. Mrs Konrad Mizzi’s return to her native China, children in tow, was financed by a salarju fenomenali. But though the money is questionable and the appointment clearly a grossly abusive act of blatant cronyism, the more pertinent question remains: what is she actually doing and where can we find her?

She’s raising investment for Malta, the prime minister said in defence of his actions, but where can investors find Mrs Mizzi if they want to invest in Malta? There are no contact details for her anywhere – no phone number, no email address, no office address – nothing. Malta Enterprise’s special envoy to China has literally disappeared and gone underground. She is untraceable by potential investors.

Internet searches return several Opposition questions about her appointment but nothing Muscat has said that justifies the appointment and expenditure.

The Opposition should stop talking about Mrs Mizzi’s salary and the method of her appointment, and instead start asking where investors can find her, given that she appears to have disappeared down the rabbit-hole.

Holding government to account over controversial appointments is not negative, it’s positive – even if the only result is to remind the electorate that the government holds it in contempt, acting abusively in the bigger picture while tossing electors the equivalent of petty coins from a medieval despot, in the form of Eur110 cheques and two cents off petrol.

IIP changes

The prime minister tried to introduce the sale of citizenship by stealth. The legal notice creating Identity Malta was published quietly on 10th September, when parliament was still in recess and everyone’s attention was away on holiday or at the beach.

The scheme itself was not announced publicly in Malta by means of a pompous press conference with a row of flags (the treatment reserved for a 2c increase in the already-inflated price of petrol), but by a covert interview Muscat gave in China to BusinessWeek, a magazine not in wide circulation on a couple of tiny islands where few people read anything other than each other’s Facebook time-lines.

Muscat repeatedly ignored criticism back home, even as thousands of incredulous articles were published worldwide. The Opposition refused to back down, so Muscat had to concede change. That’s not negative. That’s positive.

LNG tanker – the ultimate energija negattiva

Muscat has reduced the sale of state assets and the long-term sellout of Malta’s independence to China to a few cents off utility bills in the short-term.

That is what got him elected and he now has to deliver – not to electricity consumers, but to those who helped him, in exchange for commercial and political advantage, become prime minister of an EU member state (rather than of Malta, a crucial distinction we should make).

His plans to do as he pleases to please his paymasters have not had a smooth ride. The risks to public health and safety were not among his promises of cheaper utilities bills. It is thanks to repeated criticism by the Opposition that he’s not getting away with things so easily. Safeguarding health and safety is not negative. It’s positive.

Labour’s positive energy is negative

We all received letters at home promising us reduced utilities bills. Those letters cost money to produce and send. And they were in ARMS envelopes but signed off by a cabinet minister, not an ARMS or Enemalta official.

Konrad Mizzi later explained that utilities will not actually cost less to produce and supply, but consumers will be charged less because the government is playing around with a vulnerable state company’s capital and finances to pay for a key electoral campaign promise.

Of course, he didn’t quite put it that way. What he said was that Malta Power and Gas Ltd. will be sold to the members of Electrogas consortium which has yet to become ElectroGas Malta Ltd. Payment for the sale of Enemalta’s capital asset will be staggered (so that the consortium members don’t spend too much at once, given that they now hold all the strings and can play with the desperate Maltese government like a toy).

The staggered payments will be used to subsidise water and electricity production which still costs the same or more.

It’s because the government is criticised openly that Konrad Mizzi gave us a spjegazzjoni fenomenali. That’s not negative criticism or negative behaviour, that’s positive: Opposition behaviour that gets results and answers for electors, even electors who don’t give a damn and electors who voted Labour.

In general and with ring-fenced exceptions like civil unions, it’s government policy which is negative and it’s Opposition criticism which is positive for electors.