You’d be forgiven for thinking that this is a government project

The way that the prime minister is pushing his buddy’s University of Baksheesh, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a government project and this will be a public college.

No matter how serious the issue, the prime minister generally does a disappearing act and leaves his men to face the media music.

But with Hani Hasan Naji Al Salah (please everybody stop saying “Sadeen Group” because the sole owner is just this one man) and his diploma mill and seaside dorm with wonderful views of the Mediterranean in a tranquil landscape outside the development zone, the prime minister is out there on the frontline.

He’s fighting us on the beaches, and he will never surrender. “Don’t worry, Hani. I’ll sort them out.”

He’s so keen, and the project is so patently absurd – a diploma mill, for heaven’s sake – that people are now wondering what’s in it for the man who rented his own car to the state for €7,500.

Meanwhile, his Jordanian building contractor buddy has taken a back seat and disappeared altogether. His representative was at Cottonera with the prime minister and his entourage on Friday, but the prime minister didn’t bother to introduce him to the press – which should have been the thing to do because, after all, it’s his boss’s ‘university’ and not the prime minister’s.

And the journalists present there, curiously, did not ask for his name or even ignore the prime minister and direct their questions at the actual ‘university’s’ representative instead, which is exactly what they should have done.