Malta’s Prime Minister is currently reeling from a political crisis after he lost support in the cabinet and is now close to losing his majority in the parliamentary group. Saviour Balzan knows this very well because Robert Abela confides in him in crisis management, PR, and propaganda matters. He is basically his consultant and his apparatchik and has worked closely with Robert Abela to conjure up fraudulent narratives to save his skin. Now, Saviour Balzan is assisting Robert Abela in conducting a propaganda campaign to defend him from the inevitable possibility of an internal push to remove him from power. Simultaneously, Saviour Balzan sells advertising space to the Ministry of Energy while foreshadowing Miriam Dalli’s leadership ambitions. Basically, he is setting up himself in a position where he will always benefit from the Labour Party irrespective of who is the leader.
This has been Saviour Balzan’s effective way of doing business in the local press industry: allying himself with the worst elements in politics to obtain patrons, government funding and connections while building his media business. His biggest and earliest ally was John Dalli, one of PN’s most corrupt ministers and currently, the only Maltese politician being prosecuted in court over allegations of bribery and corruption. Saviour Balzan provided biased coverage while defending John Dalli in his Snus bribery case, in addition to having supported him during his leadership campaign against Lawrence Gonzi, which Dalli ultimately lost. Following John Dalli’s failure to get elected as PN leader, Saviour Balzan lost the opportunity to have his media business extensively funded by the government and used to complain that the PN administration was starving him of advertising while favouring others like Lou Bondi and his company Where’s Everybody. Ironically, Lou Bondi is today, like Saviour Balzan also a propaganda consultant for Robert Abela.
When Joseph Muscat took office, Saviour Balzan expanded his business with a substantial increase in government funding, all the while generating low-paying jobs for his reporters. Today, Saviour Balzan has become as influential in the local press industry as to become a monopoly and a gatekeeper for government advertising and marketing contracts. Apart from servicing many government entities and departments with advertising and marketing, Saviour Balzan is the man the government goes to when it is about to distribute funds within the media industry or to legislate about the sector. Most of the COVID-19 pandemic funding to the press industry was guided by his demands and consultation, including the funding given to defunct daily-printed newspapers that indirectly propped up the media of political parties. Today, Saviour Balzan acts as the same kind of gatekeeper that he used to fight against during Lawrence Gonzi’s administration.
So, today, Saviour Balzan is one of the main reasons why we have market inefficiencies in the press and publishing industries, such as by for example having defunct daily newspapers funded by the government while the industry rests on low-paying and precarious jobs. A complete halt of government funding would relieve the market of these inefficiencies and create a more just and meritocratic free market, but in reality, we have no other choice but to play Saviour’s game to get ahead. The problem is that independent journalists like myself find it incredibly difficult to cross over the barrier of entry to government advertising to sustain press and investigative operations because unlike Saviour I am not supporting the government and I am neither propagating for it.
What’s worse in this is that Saviour’s behaviour and propaganda campaigns even go another step further than simply clean and white propaganda-marketing campaigns – sometimes they are even surgical, fraudulent, calculated, and politically devious. Not only is MaltaToday used as an outright propaganda tool for the government, but Saviour Balzan has repeatedly used his newspapers for very devious political schemes at times even serving the interests of organised crime itself, such as when Saviour Balzan conducted a deliberate and effective campaign against Jason Azzopardi during the last general election campaign by publishing various articles against him in both Illum and MaltaToday. Saviour Balzan even told PN Leader, Bernard Grech, that if they got rid of Jason, PN would would reduce the gap with Labour by 15,000 votes. It is no surprise that Saviour Balzan would not want Jason Azzopardi to get elected. Jason Azzopardi has consistently been unwittingly in the way of Saviour Balzan for a very long time having supported Lawrence Gonzi against John Dalli in his leadership and eventually, becoming a major critic of Joseph Muscat’s corruption even becoming a lawyer to the family of Daphne Caruana Galizia after her murder.
Saviour Balzan kept hitting on Jason Azzopardi even publicly after he failed to get elected, outing and naming him (with intended shame) as a whistleblower – an act that coming from a media editor can only be described as nefarious, gross, obscene and incredibly unprofessional. Imagine, if I had to name and shame the Labour Party sources to MaltaToday – how do you think that would go? I wouldn’t do such a thing, because, unlike Saviour, I try to keep high standards in what I do despite the lack of resources. And I don’t play dirty games.
In this backdrop of affairs, it is important to note, however, that Saviour Balzan is a pathological liar and unprincipled mercenary. He has told all of us that after 2019 he felt great regret over what Joseph Muscat did. He felt shit. Saviour Balzan kept doing devious PR schemes for Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri even after it was revealed that 17 Black was owned by Yorgen Fenech. Saviour Balzan can’t make a more theatrical effort to express how sorry he is for feeling supposedly “betrayed by Joseph Muscat.” He doesn’t feel betrayed, and he kept working for them despite the fact that they had just been implicated in a gross scandal of corruption and money laundering over 17 Black.
Today, Saviour Balzan didn’t change his ways – he is doing it all over again, pretending to be an honest businessman in the press industry while cutting nefarious deals with Robert Abela. Those within the Labour Party who would like to see Robert Abela resign are on the right side of history, but they should know very well that Saviour Balzan is working directly against them.
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