Timeline of a scandal

In one of its contributions on the scandal regarding the granting of a consultant’s salary to a minister’s then girlfriend (subsequently his wife), The Shift News published a timeline of relevant events.

This is as follows:

April 2020 – Amanda Muscat joins Clayton Bartolo as his private secretary.

December 2020 – Minister Bartolo gives his girlfriend a consultancy contract, increasing her pay by €25,000.

March 21, 2021 – Standards Commissioner (George Hyzler) receives a request to investigate then education minister Justyne Caruana regarding her boyfriend’s employment.

March 26, 2021 – Amanda Muscat suddenly resigns from her consultancy job with her boyfriend.

April 2021 – Amanda Muscat is given a new consultancy contract at the Gozo Ministry headed by minister Clint Camilleri. She receives a further increase of €5,000.

14 December 2021 – Standards Commissioner (George Hyzler) publishes report finding Justyne Caruana guilty of breaching ethics. Prime Minister Robert Abela pressures her to resign.

31 December 2021 – Amanda Muscat’s contract with the Gozo Ministry is terminated prematurely. No official reason is given.

January 2022 – The Prime Minister offers George Hyzler a top EU job, and this means that Hyzler’s tenure of Standards Commissioner would have to be terminated.

Chief Justice Emeritus, Joseph Azzopardi, is nominated Standards Commissioner on 8 March 2023 without the Opposition’s agreement.

Azzopardi’s report on the Amanda Muscat job concludes that there was a breach of ethics on the part of the two ministers – Clayton Bartolo and Clint Camilleri.

All this is true, but it misses an important event – the general election held on 26 March 2022.

The Prime Minister reappointed the two ministers to Cabinet after the election despite the abusive appointment involving Amanda Muscat that happened in the previous legislature. The Prime Minister fully knew the details of the Muscat case but while he pressured Justyne Caruana to resign, he shut his eyes to what Clint Camilleri and Clayton Bartolo had done. The two cases are very similar.

The reaction of the two ministers to the findings in the Standards Commissioner report was ludicrous at best. Bartolo made a conditional apology, while Camilleri insisted he did nothing wrong. Prime Minister Robert Abela accepted Bartolo’s apology as ‘sufficient’. However, Bartolo – displaying how insincere his apology was – even had the gall of defending his wife's lucrative job by saying life was 'not just about diplomas or degrees'... especially for ministers’ spouses, I would say!

But apart from what happened, I think there is a procedural issue: Can the Standards in Public Life Committee of the current legislature take action about a breach that happened in the previous legislature? I seriously doubt it.

This Parliamentary Committee met last Thursday and unanimously endorsed the report. It decided to meet again within a week to give the two mentioned ministers an opportunity to make their own submissions.

But, at the end of the day, the only real effective censorship is in the hands of the electorate.

Time will tell if this issue had any effect on the voter, as Donald Trump would say.

Censoring teachers

Hats off to Arnold Cassola for writing to the Ombudsman requesting his judgement and opinion on the ‘Media Participation Guidelines for Educators in Malta’ issued by the Ministry of Education. It seems that one man can do much more than the official Opposition!

These guidelines were issued by the Ministry for Education to all teachers of all grades, and sets out parameters regarding the participation and appearance of educators in the media.

According to these guidelines, educators must obtain prior approval to participate in media appearances and need to include details of the respective subjects and media in doing so. Moreover, these guidelines indicate that the relevant content must be focused exclusively on education.

Apparently, the Education Ministry thinks that the public’s opinion of its performance would improve if teachers keep their mouth shut! This is outright censorship that has no place in a democratic country. Moreover, as Cassola said, the obligation requiring whatever teachers contribute to the media to be focused only on current policies means that there is an obligation for the opinion of educators to be in line with the Ministry for Education!

This blatant attempt at censoring opinions on our current education system is an outrage. Teachers are professionals and have every right to point out how the system can be improved or even reformed.

Free speech is treasured by all Maltese citizens and this action on the part of the Ministry of Education is incredibly arrogant, but nonetheless naive as teachers can always get around the censorship threat.

Built vs unbuilt land

In an article published last Tuesday in The Times, Alan Xuereb who lives abroad, claimed that when he flies over Malta he sees ‘an aggressive urbanisation of nearly every square metre of the island’.

Statistically the built-up area of the Maltese islands is less than half their total area. It is almost only one-third. So, the writer’s vision must have been a hallucination. The question of whether we have too much developed land is an opinion to which many – including Alan Xuereb – subscribe. Nonetheless, it remains an opinion.

The percentage of land that is built up is not an opinion – it is a scientific fact. The land earmarked Outside Development Zone (ODZ) is much bigger in area than the development zone. Some developments cannot be allowed in residential zones and so they have to be built in ODZ areas. Over the years, the ODZ factor was abused and too many new residences were allowed there.

It so happens that once there was a crazy minister who divided Malta into residential zones and the rest, the so-called ODZ.

Were it not for this decision, something like what Alan Xuereb imagined could have happened. But it didn’t.

The ODZ idea, warts and abuses included, did stop uncontrolled development from spreading wildly.

But then crazy ministers have no place in this country.