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This whole board of inquiry is a waste of time and public money.
As Prime Minister, Muscat should have summoned Mallia straight away and given him his marching orders on the sole basis that the event happened at all.
That is happened is indisputable. There are two or three bullet holes in a private citizen’s car and nobody is contesting the fact that Manuel Mallia’s driver shot those bullets.
The ‘how and why’ are irrelevant in this type of serious event where political responsibility should have been assumed on the spot.
But then why are we kidding ourselves that this government and its members can ever be trusted to do the right thing?
Instead they will use this time either to try to guide public attention to another ‘hot’ story – or worse, they will try to fabricate a story in-house, much in the same way they tried to hide Konrad Mizzi’s abject failures in his personal and much more importantly, public service endeavours by trying to implicate Pullicino in some half-baked corruption allegation.
Back to the board of inquiry: has this been ‘kostid’? Even if the work were to done pro bono (unlikely), there would be still be communication, stationery, and sheer ‘waste of time’ costs involved.
Journalists should ask who will pay these costs – the trigger happy security cum driver, or Mallia’s ministry or other government entity, which means it will be paid by us?
Could we just call off this charade and save ourselves some much-needed cash, seeing that if the PM had any doubt about the Minister’s actions that required an investigation, he should have sacked him straight away and, if at all, hold an inquiry to understand the facts so that the failings are not repeated by the successor?
As things stand, is there any bookie who will accept a bet that Mallia will sail through this unscathed come 15 days from now? I guess not; bookies ain’t stupid.
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@Josephmuscrat #The prime minister must bite the #bullet#
The only news that will save Manwel Mallia from media attention will be the revelation of Konrat’s ‘milestone schedule.’
If only he could finish it before the deadline.
Stalling for time until the next big story overshadows the last one.
Now we talk about the billion dollar bridge.
That’ll be the green hat then.
Think they can fool us with their distractions, eh? What one man can learn, another can discover. I’ll be watching them like a hawk.
Forgot about that one Ciccio. Yep, brace for that other breaking news.
However, it seems that the frickkin hideous Gozo bridge is also being tried as a lightning rod for the peoples’ ‘anger and disgust’.
Absolutely. At Eur 750 million, it puts Manwel Mallia’s Eur 500,000 to shame.
Oops, did I come back to the subject of Manwel Mallia?
The next one that will come up will probably be that we discovered oil.
This idea of Mallia to pass the buck on to three retired judges is ludicrous.
It just goes to show what a state of utter panic he is in.
The Maltese public wants answers to questions.
The first question that has to be answered immediately is:
Why was the victim of attempted murder arrested and held in police custody for the best part of two days while the perpetrator is running loose?
We do not need three retired judges deliberating for a fortnight to answer this question.
All that is required is a decent and honest police chief who is allowed to do his duty by his political superiors.
There are, of course, dozens of other yet unanswered questions on this shameful episode.
Because the British driver is foreign and the minister’s driver is Maltese therefore the British driver doesn’t fall under the Taghna Lkoll Protection Act.
More likely it is because he is not a member of Malta Taghna Lkoll.
How can Joseph Muscat ask Mallia to resign if he himself has failed to honour his own word and resign on the new power station which never was?
If I shoot at someone, will I be immediately arrested or will I be sent home to my family and wait for an inquiry into my boss’s actions?
In the Malta of Labour Party times the person you shot at would have been the arrested and the detained person.
You would be first ‘interrogated’ at Police HQ, then sent to the psychiatric hospital for an indeterminate period and when the Minister of Bad Driving and the Attorney General (of opposing opinions on the same case) come around to it, you will then face charges and immediately declared guilty until (with Mallia’s help as defence attorney) proven innocent, and afterwards making a reasonable contribution to add to his manna he unexpectedly found under his bed and still has no idea where it came from.
Lucky guy in all of this is Chris Cardona who just got ousted from the spotlight by an even bigger story.
In the meantime where’s the attempted murder charge or is this going to simply disappear?
What if all retired judges refuse to handle this shit?
Thumbs down for Mallia. Muscat, you have no choice but to obey the will of the people.
Part of the the job description of prime ministers in all democracies is the hiring and firing of ministers.
It is the responsibility, the right and the duty of prime ministers to carry out this task on their own, without the help of the judiciary or anyone else.
Joseph Muscat is either unaware of this, or he has relinquished this part of his job, or is too afraid to do the inevitable and wants others, namely retired magistrates and dragged along with them the Leader of the Opposition to do his work for him.
What is left for us is to draw our own unpleasant conclusions.
Of course, it is a waste of time. Just look at the history of the MLP, for example, the way Farrugia Sacco wriggled free with the help of his mates in the Labour Party.
The absolute worst bit of this whole story is not the shooting, but the arrest of the victim.
Crazed shooting – totally appalling, as is the cover up, but the victim being held under arrest for 40 hours…absolutely petrifying, as this is not ‘in the heat of the moment’.
Are the people who held the guy under arrest being investigated/punished in any way? What is their justification?
There should be no other item on the agenda until this is settled correctly.