According to the new rules, content produced using taxpayer money should be released on official channels, such as the Facebook pages of a ministry. Once it is shared officially, ministers are free to re-share such content to their personal Facebook pages.

However, several ministers are doing their utmost to keep breaching such rules, with many of them publishing taxpayer-produced content directly to their own personal Facebook pages. In most cases, they are doing this at the same exact moment as the content is shared on the official pages, using a system of crossposting, which still goes against the rules.

But in this morning’s example, Cutajar went a step further. She shared the video directly on her own Facebook page.

It was only shared on the ministry’s official Facebook page Riformi, some 40 minutes later after Lovin Malta wrote to Cutajar and highlighted the fact that she was breaching the law.

Interestingly, when the video was shared on the ministry’s Facebook page Riformi, the administrators were sure to tag the junior minister’s personal Facebook page in the post. This was not reciprocated earlier when the junior minister shared the video herself.

So rather than using the junior minister’s personal page to promote the ministry’s official page, it is the ministry’s official page that is promoting Cutajar’s personal page.

It is no wonder then that the publicly-owned ministry’s official page has 1,433 likes compared to the privately-owned Facebook page of Cutajar which enjoys almost 30,000 likes.

This morning’s video, which shared a positive message about breaking down gender stereotypes, features Cutajar throughout in what is clearly an exercise of self-promotion, days after she came under fire for allegedly having a relationship with murder suspect Yorgen Fenech. She has so far refused to comment about the allegations, but has not held any media activities since.

Meanwhile, more than 4,200 people have already signed a petition calling for an end to Facebook misuse by government officials and insisting that ministers should refund the taxpayer money they abused. The petition is part of a campaign launched by Lovin Malta’s show Kaxxaturi which also raised more than €6,000 and has already been seen watched by more than 315,000 people.

Other Cabinet members who seem insistent on breaching the rules include Transport Minister Ian Borg, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri and the Prime Minister himself Robert Abela, who seems to be doing the reverse of what the Standards Commissioner insists upon. Instead of publishing official content on the government’s page and then sharing it from his personal page, Abela often published official content on his personal page and gets the official government page to share his own page.

Have you donated and signed the petition yet? Visit kaxxaturi.com to join the campaign.