The carnival comes to town

Carnival started early this year, on Monday, and it was replete with masks, pantomimes, outlandish performances, street theatre, satire and even foreign guests from across the European Union.

And while it may sound like some sort of a government-sponsored event, it was, truth be told, far from it. In fact, this Brussels-sponsored fête was probably the last way the government would have chosen to inaugurate Carnival week.

It all started with a bit of impromptu street theatre when a messenger for the Office of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri approached one of the foreign guests, the chairman of the PANA Committee no less, at 2pm in the streets of Valletta to deliver a letter full of excuses and apologies for not being able to participate in the performance later in the afternoon.

But that letter was not without its fair share of farce, not least of which was that line questioning the PANA Committee’s very remit, explaining that he did not want to create a nasty precedent of nonelected people being called to testify before European parliamentary committees.

Unfortunately the joke appears to have been lost on the PANA Committee chairman and at least several of its members, who took great exception to the chief of staff’s audacity to have questioned their significant parliamentary remit.

To doubt our mandate is a scandal, the chairman later said. These foreigners just don’t get our Mediterranean sense of humour, do they?

That was followed by another street performance by Green Party Alternattiva Demokratika, which had several of its members lined up before the entrance of Parliament wearing Konrad Mizzi and Panama themed masks and similarly-themed placards.

And then it was time for the main attraction – enter the man everyone had been waiting for but who had kept everyone on tenterhooks for months on end by refusing to confirm his participation until the 11th hour because, as every great performer knows, the build-up of suspense is key to a great performance.

The moment had come for the entry of King Carnival himself, Konrad Mizzi. He launched into a tirade against this newspaper and The Times, both of which had partnered with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for the Panama Papers leak, who had full access to the database, and who, as such, spilled the beans on both Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri.

His routine was impeccable, although his Donald Trump impersonation with his accusations of having been the victim of ‘fake news’ was admittedly somewhat lacklustre. An orange wig would have helped with the court jester act.

We in Malta had already witnessed much of that performance. How that trust in New Zealand and a Panamanian company had been set up in his family’s interest and nothing else, even though such services are easily available in Malta itself. How he was the victim of character assassination and vicious speculation, and how such a big to do was made of his financial structures simply because he was such a successful politician and was doing such great things for the country.

His punch line was that if he could go back in time and not have opened that much-maligned Panamanian company, he would do just that. Of course he would. But he forgot to add that he would have done that if he had had the advance knowledge that he would have been caught. That is because when he opened that company the thought of being caught was all but an absurd notion. It was only for that unfortunate hack of the Mossack Fonseca email server, a completely unforeseeable eventuality at the time, which led to that. If that had not happened, no one would have ever known about the company or the trust, but of course we are certain that they would have been declared to the taxman and the public by now.

We have to hand it to the government; the pre-Carnival jovialities almost rivalled those of the Carnival itself. One wonders what the government may have in store for next year’s pre-Carnival now that it has set such a magnificent precedent – an election campaign perhaps?

If there is any one single take away from this, that one thing is that Malta certainly knows how to throw a pre-Carnival party – Venice and Rio eat your hearts out.