Oh come on, give us a tweet

They are a media savvy bunch, especially when it comes to social media, but their savviness is limited to good news.

We are of course talking about the Prime Minster, the Ministers and all their communications gurus.

Theirs is a highly organized setup which tweets coordinated and pre-agreed messages whenever some piece of ‘good news’ comes up, creating the illusion that all is well in the magical land of Malta. Some of their favourite buzzwords are: ‘proud’, ‘common sense prevails’, ‘prosperity’, ‘surplus’, ‘strong economy’ and ‘best of times’.

This is really OK because good news should be celebrated. Why not?

The problem is that whenever something bad happens, for example when people rise up against yet another ODZ fuel station application, when the friendly chairman of a shady bank is arrested for money laundering and evading sanctions in the US, or when the news breaks that the second largest bank in Malta is considering closing up shop and leaving, there are no coordinated social media strategies, no tweets signed ‘JM’.

The Prime Minister is currently in Australia with his family, where he attended the opening of the Commonwealth Games. Muscat is currently the Chair in the Office of the Commonwealth, so there is nothing untoward about his presence Down Under. But in the meantime, things are happening in his own country – things he cannot and should not ignore.

We do not expect the Prime Minister to drop everything and jet back to Malta but we would have expected at least some form of acknowledgment, whether via a tweet or an official press release, about the HSBC revelation, which has half the country worried.

He could have tweeted something to this effect along with the tweets about squash and lawn bowl results from Gold Coast.

The same happened a few weeks ago, when the Pilatus Bank’s Ali Sadr Hasheminejad was put in handcuffs. Only then, the Prime Minister was here, not in Australia. No statement was issued by the government and it had to be a (NET TV) journalist to doorstep the Prime Minister on the steps of Castille and squeeze some form of comment out of him.

The same sort of attitude is being displayed by other government ministers, including Finance Minister Edward Scicluna, who has lately become averse to media questions.

When a journalist approached the minister for comment in the wake of the Pilatus Bank arrest, the Minister had the audacity to tell off the journalist using the now famous phrase: ‘Oh come on.”

Scicluna displayed similar behaviour this week when one of our journalists asked him whether the government was preparing for a possible pullout by HSBC. So far, the finance ministry has failed to issue any statements related to this possible development in the banking sector, and once again the Minister only commented because journalists pressed him about it.

Similarly, Home Affairs Minister Michael Farrugia did not find time to acknowledge a letter sent by PD deputy leader Timothy Alden to the Police Commissioner, in which he claimed corruption as his family was asked, by Farrugia’s ministry, whether they required any ‘special favours’.

Another ministry that seems to have lost its tongue is the one which is supposedly safeguarding our environment. Yet another Planning Authority meeting was disrupted by concerned activists who feel that Malta does not need any more fuel stations, and that all pending fuel station applications should be suspended pending an ongoing review of the policy that regulates them.

Fuel stations are one of the main issues of the moment, with many people feeling that greedy developers are overdoing it, and are being allowed to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ until the review is completed.

One would have expected Environment Minister Jose Herrera to at least acknowledge these concerns, to say that the message conveyed by these activists on behalf of the entire nation ‘has been noted.’

But apparently, a tweet is too much to ask for these days, unless it is about bocci.