Joseph Cuschieri is to be appointed ambassador to Greece

Our man in Greece

Late yesterday afternoon I received word from one of my sources telling me that Joseph Cuschieri is to be appointed Malta’s ambassador to Greece, that he had been blabbing about it.

It seemed so outrageous that I couldn’t believe it, and thought I had better triple check it, in case Cuschieri had been blabbing in his usual idiotic way about something that meant nothing.

I couldn’t get anyone after office hours and so decided to wait until this morning. But with this government, anything is possible and I should have known better. The story was up on timesofmalta.com at 6.43am. It looks like even they were shocked.

The newspaper didn’t ring the Foreign Office for confirmation (probably had the same problem I did with office hours) but Cuschieri picked up the phone when they rang and while he wouldn’t confirm that he is to be appointed ambassador to Greece, he didn’t deny it either.

My dears, the end is nigh. It has to be. In the endless litany of depressing news about corrupt and abusive appointments that I suspect are being made deliberately to denigrate and drag down roles, positions and institutions (it was a method used by Mintoff and other totalitarian autocrats), this has to be the worst after Wenzu Mintoff being made a judge.

At least ambassadors are there for a fixed term; judges are there for life, until retirement.

Joseph Cuschieri is the only brother of the notorious Manuel Cuschieri who ran the Labour Party’s bitter and spiteful radio show Tajjeb Li Tkun Taf on its party radio station for many years. Both brothers were born into very unfortunate circumstances in Sliema’s Lazy Corner and grew up largely in care homes, and both found a sense of security and belonging in the Malta Labour Party.

Both brothers are completely uneducated and neither of them can speak or write English. Manuel has basic literacy in Maltese, but Joseph cannot even manage that. Manuel has a simple but highly effective way of communicating in speech (mainly vile messages and misinformation) on radio, but Joseph is completely inarticulate even in Maltese. To make matters worse, he of very low intelligence.

Both worked as waiters at Sliema’s now-demolished Magic Kiosk, and for Joseph Cuschieri, this was his life’s work. He did nothing else other than campaign for the Labour Party and become involved in its structures.

Joseph Cuschieri stood for election to parliament for the first time in 1998, and thanks to his brother’s efforts, he won a seat. He won another seat in 2003 and again in 2008, but he did not last long after that election. A man without a seat in parliament was elected leader of the Labour Party and could not become Leader of the Opposition because he did not have a seat in parliament.

So Joseph Cuschieri, the soft touch with a low IQ from a troubled background and vulnerable to manipulation, was talked into sacrificing his seat in parliament for Joseph Muscat, and that’s exactly what he did.

In return, and this shows a pattern that is now playing out in government, Muscat put Cuschieri on the party pay-roll with a sizeable salary but no real job.

Cuschieri became frustrated, realised how he had undermined himself in giving up his seat while everyone else kept theirs, and began to agitate for attention and a position of status. He was promised a seat in the European Parliament, that the party would back him on getting the famous ‘sixth seat’ when it was finally allocated to Malta. He got that seat in the European Parliament in 2011, was a bit of a laugh there for three years as his Facebook posts showed, and then wasn’t elected in the 2014 European Parliament elections because his party leader thought that his debt had been paid with those three years and backed other candidates instead.

Joseph Cuschieri, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, has been an albatross round Muscat’s neck for the last seven years, but more so since losing his seat in the European Parliament last year. He has been pressing for a position and now he has finally got it, to the detriment of Malta.