Anglu Farrugia’s tacky cufflinks are destined for the dress-up box or charity shop

Published: January 6, 2017 at 2:48pm

Anglu Farrugia, who accepted his corrupt appointment to Speaker of the House, and a magistrate’s post for his daughter, in return for his silence on illicit liaisons between the Labour Party, when he was deputy leader, and business operators, is to spend €10,000 on tacky cufflinks as gifts.

For that sum, he expects to buy 1,000 pairs of silver-plated links in green gift-boxes, which makes them, at €10 a pair, cheaper and tackier than anything you can get in a tourist souvenir shop.

The design is hideous and literal: a depiction of Parliament House on a tiny thing the size of a cufflink, with the legend PARLAMENT TA’ MALTA. Except that it’s not so tiny, because at 2.2cm long, Anglu Farrugia’s cufflinks are twice the size of the standard discreet version.

But the worst of it is not the aesthetics or the cheapness of it all. The worst, the very worst, is that the Speaker of the House, former deputy leader of the most progressive, liberal and feminist political party ever in the history of Malta, takes the default position that all his visitors, to whom he will have to give gifts, will be men.

Perhaps he could find another budget of €10,000 and use the same design to make earrings. Like the cufflinks, they’ll all end up in the children’s dressing-up box or at the charity shop.

The Anglu he have the amazing sense of aesthetics and il-vera wertit.