When freeloading Clyde Puli spent 16 days at the Olympic Games in China and made us pay for it
Clyde Puli, who’s angling to become one of the Nationalist Party’s two deputy leaders so that he can carry on maximising his opportunities for freeloading off other people’s money, has been a calculating bum for as long as I can remember. Let’s put it this way, when you’re born ungifted and with such low firepower between your ears, and are lazy with it, your choices for making your own way in life are pretty limited. So your best option is to become a professional courtier in the salon of whoever currently rules the roost – which for most of Puli’s adult life was the Nationalist Party, until Something Bad happened in 2013.
He got his permanent seat on the gravy train, which he continues to milk safe in the knowledge that it will never run dry. He is a public relations man at the Foundation for Medical Services, a sinecure he got through corrupt cronyism through his involvement with the Nationalist Party/government.
He continues to draw a salary there still, even though he never goes in to work, and the government does nothing about it because the Labour Party also has its own politicians with state sinecures who don’t feel the need to report for work either. They’ve sorted it out between themselves: you say nothing about ours and we’ll say nothing about yours.
When the Nationalists were re-elected in 2008, the awful and useless Clyde Puli was made a parliamentary secretary for sport, helping to hammer further nails into the PN coffin (and this is one of the ‘new faces’ with which Adrian Delia will supposedly be sweeping through his New Way of change and his break with the past). His ‘job’ at the Foundation for Medical Services was kept open for him and he slid back comfortably into it in 2013.
When he became PS for Sport, straight away, his first thought was how to use his position to freeload. He was appointed in March and in August he went off to China with his wife and son to watch the Olympics, charging everything but his wife’s and son’s airfares to the public purse, and staying for an eyebrow-raising 16 days.
This is what I wrote about the incident, nine years ago, involving Adrian Delia’s ‘new face of change’ Clyde Puli:
It’s a good thing the Olympics fell somewhere around Santa Marija, because that was Clyde Puli’s summer holiday sorted. He’s going to have lots of interesting stuff to write about when the school term begins and he’s given the obligatory essay title, What I Did On My Summer Holiday.
In his role as Parliamentary Secretary for Sport, he set off for China and spent 16 days there with his wife and son, whose airfares he paid out of his own pocket, we are told, though no mention was made of who paid for their hotel accommodation and meals (the Chinese?).
Nobody would have a problem with a parliamentary secretary for sport going to watch the Olympic Games, but Clyde has made it seem a little too much like he grabbed the opportunity for an extended family jaunt dressed up as work, funded by somebody else.
“It was a good opportunity for networking,” the ministry said. Funny how that’s invariably the excuse.
Take my advice, Clyde: if you want to go on holiday with your wife and son, take leave of absence from work and do so privately. A 16-day working trip to China for the Olympic Games when you’re the mere Parliamentary Secretary for Sport for Malta (where?) is a little pretentious, though it might be considered crucial to maintain a presence while our national athletes trail in last. You know, for moral support. It’s good to know that Clyde’s watching.
“Sport builds character”, that legend says. You have to laugh.