The Justice Minister is lying to the press and the public: he was already seeing Janice Bartolo when he appointed her to the state orchestra board

The Justice Minister, Owen Bonnici, has told the Times of Malta that he appointed Janice Bartolo, a propagandist employed by the Labour Party, to the state orchestra board before they “became a couple”.

He lies baldly. Or rather, he is using literal legalisms to mislead while not actually lying. He is technically correct: he and Miss Bartolo were not an official couple in March 2014 when he sent her a formal letter of appointment, because he was still living with his wife and daughter, and therefore the official couple was Dr and Mrs Owen Bonnici and not Dr Owen Bonnici and Miss Janice Bartolo.

You will notice that he did not tell the newspaper that he appointed Miss Bartolo before he began seeing her, or before he began sleeping with her, but before “we became a couple”. Yet at that stage he was sleeping with her already and this was the cause of major trouble in the Bonnici household as other young women/girls had been before.

At some point that summer he told his wife he was leaving her for Janice Bartolo, and moved into a cramped mezzanine he had originally bought as an office, in Old Mint Street, Valletta, where he still lives today. Having left home, he was able to begin seeing Miss Bartolo semi-publicly and his wife filed for separation because they could not reach an agreement out of court.

By the end of summer and early autumn, the Minister was seeing Miss Bartolo so openly – I suppose this is what he means when he says they became a couple – that I was able to report about it.

I didn’t do so earlier not because I didn’t know about it – I did – but out of respect for Mrs Bonnici, a hardworking nurse at the state general hospital, and because of the remote possibility that they might reconcile, which becomes very difficult when things become public. Once she took the matter to court, that was no longer an option.

Now this is a personal view: I thought it particularly reprehensible that he was sneaking off to have sexual relations with a Labour Party employee while his wife was working the late shift swabbing patients down and changing bed-pans and drips. What are these men? They’re walking, talking clichés.