There is more than a hint of the comical in the denouement of the Joe Saliba/Nazzareno Vassallo Mediterranean cruise saga, which finally reached its very predictable climax on Monday.
Viewers of One News two evenings ago were regaled with a stormy sequence, as Labour’s intrepid ambush journalist Charlon Gouder greeted the visibly enraged PN secretary as he stepped off a luxury yacht at the Msida marina.
By this time, the identity of the “mystery” yacht owner had long been revealed… not just by the MLP’s e-paper Maltastar.com (which kept up the suspense for three whole days), but also by virtually every other newspaper in Malta.
All excellent stuff for comedy; but once you look beyond the humour, a number of serious and pertinent issues inevitably come to the fore.
The first is that this otherwise trivial and forgettable instant, apart from providing some entertaining footage for One TV, also presented a graphic illustration of our national penchant for political hypocrisy.
The Labour media was quick to point out that Nazzareno Vassallo, the building contractor with whom Saliba cruised the Med, has also won a number of public tenders, as well as a private contract to build the new Nationalist Party headquarters in Pieta’ .
The implication is that the evident friendship that exists between Saliba and Vassallo was cultivated specifically in order to land these lucrative contracts; a serious allegation which has been vehemently denied by Saliba himself… although there can be little doubt that close ties between the industrial and political classes will inevitably breed precisely this kind of suspicion.
Hence the hypocrisy. Labour is arguably right to highlight these and other questionable aspects of Malta’s political landscape; but before complaining about the smell in the PN’s stables, it would do well to clean out the mess in its own.
It was only last October that a Malta Labour Party delegation, headed by Labour deputy leader Charles Mangion, went to Dubai accompanied by a number of prominent local contractors. Then as now, the Nationalist media made a mountain out of this particular molehill, claiming that the trip revealed that Labour, once in government, would be nepotistic in the dishing out of public contracts.
Hypocrisy appears therefore to be multiple. The PN’s secretary general appears incapable of seeing anything wrong with cruising the Mediterranean with a well-known Nationalist contractor, while at the same time crying Blue Murder over a similar trip embarked upon by Labour officials last year. Likewise, the Labour press went to town with the story of Saliba’s holiday, quite forgetting that its own party had been “guilty” (if the word can be used in this context) of an equally suspicious business trip which had been exposed in exactly the same way by the Nationalist media.
At this point, the uncoloured observers among us would do well to question the entire ethos at work behind these particular “scandals”.
At a glance, Joe Saliba might have chosen his holiday companions with greater care. Nazzareno Vassallo is by Saliba’s own definition a party card-holder and a former Nationalist mayor. Saliba himself may see no conflict of interest, and at face value he may well be right. But he surely must have realised that, coming so soon before a general election, all he was doing was supplying a wealth of ammunition to be used against his party by the Opposition.
More to the point, he must have been aware that his proximity to Vassallo would be interpreted as a symptom of nepotism, precisely at a time when the government is reeling from a series of corruption scandal. From a political perspective, the decision to go on holiday with Vassallo can only be described as a naïve faux pas. And naturally, the same can be said in equal measure for Labour and its Dubai debacle.
If any general lesson can be drawn from all this, it would not be limited to Joe Saliba and his ill-advised travel plans. Rather, it would be that the unhealthy relationship that exists between the political and business classes is not conducive to transparent governance. On the contrary, it strongly suggests that corruption and nepotism are inevitable, so long as the law continues to permit the ongoing practice of large businesses making undeclared financial contributions to political parties.
If we wish to evolve beyond a comical country, the first step would be to put an end to this practice by introducing a long-overdue law to govern party financing. Until that day, we can only expect the current festival of hypocrisy to continue unabated.