Yes, like getting involved in shoot-outs on public roads while babysitting your daughter

You have to wonder what Manuel Mallia’s definition of loyalty is. The sort of loyalty, as we saw last December, that comes at the trigger-end of a gun.

Incidentally, as we were reminded serendipitously today, chauffeurs shooting at people from cabinet ministers’ official cars are a time-honoured tradition when the Labour Party is in government.

Minister Karmenu Vella’s driver, Karmenu Farrugia (father of ex Super One reporter Julia Farrugia), was named under oath by a repentant fellow thug – Gianni Psaila aka Il-Pupa – as the man who shot Raymond Caruana dead at the Gudja Nationalist Party Club. He was chauffeur to Karmenu Vella at the time, and the submachine gun was apparently kept in Vella’s official car, though it is not clear whether this was with or without Vella’s knowledge and consent.

And 28 years later, Minister Manuel Mallia’s chauffeur Paul Sheehan drives around in the minister’s official car while shooting at people; Karmenu Vella is European Commissioner; Karmenu Farrugia’s daughter is corruptly placed on the state payroll with a full-time salary at Projects Malta and, over and above her full-time salary, €900 a month in retainer fees for ‘advising’ Gozo Minister Anton Refalo; her father Karmenu Farrugia never faced due process, and the chief witness against him, Gianni Psaila aka Il-Pupa, died shortly after turning ‘pentito’.

The police said at the time that he “fell down a shaft” as they were chasing him across rooftops, after having responded to a report about house-breaking. Psaila was partially crippled; he had survived an attempt on his life soon after he turned state’s evidence, in the form of a car bomb that wiped out his car while he was in it and left him in hospital for ages.

That’s Malta for you. And I don’t even blame the politicians. Crooks and the corrupt will stop at nothing to stay on the surface and get the money and power they want. It’s their nature. And people deserve no better than this lousy situation because they don’t inform themselves of the facts and they are really bad judges of character and assessors of situations.

This island is repellently corrupt – it’s hardwired into people and built into the system. This, and not a daft old clock, is real corruption.