Forget about grey listing by the FATF. We are into much more serious problems including with regards to our international reputation. The Maltese government’s performance over the Russian invasion of Ukraine during the past few weeks has made us look like total clowns all over Europe and this reputation by suicide will continue to accelerate as Labour becomes empowered with an election victory. It’s like we are heading straight to the wall and our brakes are not working. After two years of rampant rent-seeking and corruption, and a cover-up of past corruption offenses by Labour politicians, imagine how much more corruption there will be once Robert Abela feels empowered enough with the popular vote. Just to give you an idea of how terrible the situation is, while the Minister of Finances complains he had to fork out €200 million of public subsidies due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine (he didn’t explain where the money is going), the Minister of the Economy, Silvio Schembri recently dished out a corrupt €17 million contract for a fifteen-year lease of a showroom in Żejtun. Voting Labour right now is like jumping into the fire because fire is essential for cooking and heating.
The Prime Minister of Malta thinks that he can apply his village-idiot tactics in Brussels just like he does back home to Karl Stagno Navarra’s audience. He genuinely thinks he is being taken seriously. After defending Maltese passport sales to Russians, he was forced to close down the programme. Then he went to Brussels and allegedly said that Europe needs to wean off its energy dependency from Russia. We buy our gas from Socar, the government oil and energy company of Azerbaijan. Our purchase agreement ends next month and Robert Abela hasn’t told us from where we are going to get our energy for the next fives years, but he thinks he is bully enough to tell Europeans that they should not buy Russian gas after telling them just a couple of days earlier, that there was nothing wrong with him selling Maltese passports to Russians.
They don’t get it. The problem is not just with Russia exclusively, it’s with all dictatorships. Europe works on the principle of democratic rule of law (Robert Abela won’t understand) and Europe can’t risk depending on countries where rule of law is dictated by a monarch – it’s volatile, dangerous and gives autocrats leverage. So, likewise, if we are not going to buy gas from Russia, we should not be buying it from Azerbaijan either.
Malta should get serious about energy, but under a gang of incompetent rent-seekers, we may as well get wrecked. Or we can support Joseph Muscat’s idea to connect Malta with a pipeline to North Africa so that he may try once again another expensive corrupt scheme with his friends. I wouldn’t joke with him. He is serious and would have no qualms about getting into politics again. The idea is preposterous though. Imagine having a link with a North African country that is taken over by an extremist group of militants. These people don’t get it.
Let’s get serious, instead. Let’s build more pipelines with Europe and pay it off with the energy sales of a nuclear power plant which we purchase in another European country. I would suppose if Enemalta is investing in energy projects abroad, we may as well get serious instead of purchasing windmills in Montenegro to fatten the pockets of Yorgen Fenech and Joseph Muscat’s friends.
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