It’s been a terrible January for hotshot Minister Ian Borg. Up until two years ago, Joseph Muscat’s favourite protégé was busy getting photographed with the boss’s wife on a pedestrian crossing in front of a restaurant owned by Silvio Debono as part of a promo campaign for breast cancer awareness. Nothing wrong with that, of course.
Yet, those were the days when the transport, infrastructure, planning and projects minister could afford a toothy smile, exuding confidence and verve.
Come 2021, the youngest ever European mayor holds a severely truncated portfolio and is increasingly looking under pressure.
Borg will understand I won’t lose sleep about his political career. After all, he made his own bed from a very tender age and seems to have no problem lying in it. His choice of bedfellow, engineer Frederick Azzopardi, who scoured the cloudy corridors of Enemalta at the time of the Electrogas deal, is the young minister’s guarantee of a reliable and trustworthy running partner.
Borg has repeatedly positioned himself as a “doer”. He has no issue with cutting corners (literally), a bit like Muscat’s own cardinal, Keith Schembri. Azzopardi is indeed a long, dark right hand who shares this utopia of tarmac.
The power vested in Borg (or in Azzopardi – I’m never too sure as to who runs the show here) as minister for infrastructure and capital projects is immense, outsized. Which is why, as a millennial version of a minister for public works, he “gets the job done” without batting an eyelid, driving his army of Hymacs straight through fields and private property as if it belonged to him.
This is Borg and Azzopardi’s favourite modus operandi and they went by unnoticed until they ramped up their misbehaviour in 2019. They even earned a rebuke from the courts for proceeding with Central Link works before it heard the residents’ appeal and Azzopardi is also facing criminal action for the Wied Qirda fracas (where, among other misdeeds, a truck laden with tarmac capsised, tragicomically, in a pristine valley).
Last year, the Marx Brothers of roadbuilding proceeded to act under the cover of darkness to build a mysterious road to nowhere in Dingli, a roundabout to service a contractor’s supermarket in Burmarrad and the Mrieħel flyovers. In all three cases, residents and farmers rebelled at the underhanded way Infrastructure Malta decided to turn up, pillage and destroy private property – from trees to boundary walls. Goliath lost the first round.
Borg and Azzopardi forgot to factor in two things: fatigue from constant road-building and the fact that not everyone is willing to roll over to their bullying. Pandora’s box popped loudly.
That Borg has sworn to destroy every inch of greenery in Malta is a given. He justifies it by quoting his own work ethic and a faceless, unnamed “poplu”, which, according to him, has given him carte blanche to proceed with his mantra of divide, destroy and develop.
But now, in spite of just “3,000 rabble rousers” who are dim enough not to like him, Minister Borg appears nervous like never before. Gone is the radiant smile of that sunny day in Buġibba; he has taken to bumbling incoherent, inconsistent replies to any question put to him by the media.
I will surely not chastise the minister for his swearing on TV; my own set of morals does not extend to the use of foul language. I’d favour honesty over words, each and every time.
Take the Mrieħel flyover, for example. Back in December, when farmers spoke to us about the secretive flyover plans, Borg rebutted accusations by claiming that nobody, including former Labour PM Alfred Sant, had seen the plans. A few days later, road safety was used as the main pretext to justify the project. Then we heard, on January 22, how Farsons would benefit from the flyover for their expansion.
Farsons denied all this. In my 38 years of life, I’ve never seen a major business conglomerate publicly contradict a politician.
I’m sure the minister used all his guile and momentum from Reno Bugeja’s interview to sell the project to the rest of his hesitant colleagues and a silent PM, himself a resident of Qormi. But if he made his case to cabinet using Farsons as a crutch, then he is deliberately misleading the government. If lies to the “poplu” are commonplace, I doubt Abela will tolerate lies to cabinet. Borg must go.
A day after the cabinet meeting (held on January 25), in another poor display of dribbling, Borg stuttered his way through another interview and hinted that Methode Electronics, not Farsons, are pinning their hopes on the Mrieħel extension. Which not only confirms that the minister has been working at the service of big business but has also done so behind everybody’s back. Familiar, isn’t it?
He also claimed that 39 firms were “silently in favour” of the project. This also means the plans for Mrieħel existed even way before 2020,and have been hidden ever since.
I never thought Borg would make such a fine reader of minds. However, he still dropped the ball by inadvertently admitting that his only interest is to service big business and not the “poplu” – residents and farmers of Mrieħel and Qormi, who have been very clear in their disapproval of the project.
For the record, Methode’s expansion application is marked as “suspended on the perit’s request”. A suspended application doesn’t justify the rush to build new roads… unless the same scenario with Bonnici Brothers’ supermarket in Burmarrad is unfolding, whereby Infrastructure Malta intend to service private interests through taxpayers’ money.
Many have found Borg’s little blasphemy on TV entertaining. I agree with him that ministerial standards aren’t to be judged on use of language; these should be judged on integrity, transparency and honesty.
Borg would fail that test foursquare.
Maybe the uncomfortable bedding he’s chosen to share with Azzopardi is starting to reek.
The minister appears nervous, sweaty, sweary; for someone who believes he is Champions League material, his dribbling of questions leaves much to be desired.
Unless he’s chosen the “other” Champions League: that of fibbers.
Wayne Flask is a member of Moviment Graffitti.
