Rosianne Cutajar Back on Health Committee: Abela’s Malta Shuffle Sparks Qormi Pride & National Debate

Rosianne Cutajar is back on Parliament’s health committee, and the whispers from Valletta cafés to village band clubs are already louder than the noon cannon. Prime Minister Robert Abela’s decision to re-instate the Labour MP from Qormi in the health portfolio—while shuffling a handful of other backbench roles—has reignited a very Maltese cocktail of political nostalgia, neighbourhood pride and Facebook-fuelled polemic.

For Cutajar, the return is more than a line on a parliamentary CV. It is a rehabilitation tour played out on the national stage, but also on the narrow streets of her hometown where her face still smiles from 2019 campaign posters laminated against the rain. Qormi, the “city of bread,” twice baked its reputation during the pandemic when local bakeries kept the island kneading; now locals hope their most talked-about politician can rise again, too.

“She never stopped answering her mobile,” says Marlene, who runs a pastizzerija opposite the old wheat mills. “If your sick cousin needs a hospital letter, she’s there. That counts for more than any front-page scandal.” The sentiment captures a stubborn truth in Maltese politics: loyalty starts at the doorstep, and forgiveness is rarely more than one favour away.

Abela’s reshuffle, announced in a terse press statement late Tuesday, also hands new committee seats to MPs Andy Ellul (economy) and Naomi Cachia (social affairs), while moving Glenn Bedingfield to the foreign affairs committee—an appointment that will delight and horrify Twitter in equal measure. But it is Cutajar’s re-entry into the health sphere—still dominated by COVID-19 catch-up and the looming Steward hospitals arbitration—that steals the spotlight.

The move is being read inside Castille as a calculated bet that the former parliamentary secretary has served sufficient penance after resigning in 2021 over an ethics probe into a property deal with Yorgen Fenech. Abela, advisers say, needs experienced communicators who can survive a six-hour budget filibuster and still smile on TVM’s evening news. Cutajar, a one-time insurance clerk turned influencer-politician, has that talent in spades.

Yet the cultural undercurrents run deeper. Maltese society has always blurred the line between the personal and the political. We gossip in church squares, yes, but we also expect our MPs to act like medieval patrons—dispensers of jobs, health cards and swift planning permits. Cutajar mastered that paternalistic script long before TikTok, and her resurgence signals that the Labour base still values accessibility over abstract integrity metrics.

Opposition Nationalists cry foul, warning of “ethics fatigue.” But even in PN-leaning villages like Żebbuġ, voters acknowledge the opposition’s own history of rehabilitation. “We gave them second chances after 1987,” one elderly man shrugs outside a festa fireworks factory. “Who are we to throw stones?”

Health professionals, meanwhile, adopt a wait-and-see stance. “If she pushes for shorter MRI waiting lists, nobody will care about her WhatsApp history,” a senior nurse at Mater Dei told Hot Malta. “But if she uses the committee for photo-ops while our overtime is slashed, the ward gossip will be brutal.”

For ordinary citizens, the reshuffle offers a reminder that Maltese politics remains a village fete on steroids: loud, colourful, occasionally tacky, but impossible to ignore. Whether Cutajar’s second act will translate into tangible improvements—shorter queues at Floriana polyclinic, better mental-health outreach in Gozo, transparent contracts for new hospitals—will determine if the applause moves beyond Qormi’s bakeries.

Until then, the island will watch, comment and, above all, judge by results. Because in Malta, redemption is not granted by pundits or priests; it is earned one clinic referral, one festa donation, one resolved parking ticket at a time.