The Pink Panther? How about the Pink Elephant?

Hankering after his roots as Inspector Farrugia, the man who had an international affair with an elephant (the famous photograph was slotted into that section of his website marked International Affairs) won’t let the notorious case of the Xiri ta’ Voti rest.

He told The Sunday Times yesterday that his report to the police on the ‘purchase’ of ‘hundreds’ of votes by ‘the Nationalists’ came up to a full three pages. Amazing. He wouldn’t have been able to fit the names onto that, let alone the results of his forensic examinations. Well, Lorry Pullicino wasn’t known for his exacting standards.

Somebody told me that Anglu Farrugia doesn’t have the same university degree as Lawrence Gonzi, as I remarked the other day – because Farrugia graduated magnum cum laude and Gonzi didn’t. What? You can graduate magnum cum laude from the University of Malta when you can’t write, can’t spell, can’t punctuate and can’t speak or write English? My God. No wonder he has ideas beyond his abilities and intelligence.

That aside, Farrugia also told The Sunday Times that he is ‘in contact’ with the European Commission and the OSCE about this little matter. I wonder what they might be thinking. ‘Here’s another email from that Maltese MP who can’t write, can’t spell, can’t punctuate and communicates in pidgin.” “Oh really? What does he want this time?” “I can’t work it out. It’s written in pidgin.”

Oddly, Farrugia made a point of telling the newspaper that ‘proof of irregularity would give rise to a political issue rather than a legal one.’ In that case, why did he go to the Paraventu, whose job it is to investigate crimes? Perhaps they should charge him with wasting police time.

If he has proof that votes were bought and sold, that is definitely a crime. So if he thinks that he has only a ‘political’ case, whatever that means, then he has no evidence of a crime at all. He went on to explain that there are lots of ways in which votes can be bought (and sold). ‘One way was to promise a vote to a candidate and the voter would then take a picture of the ballot sheet with a mobile phone.’

Oh come on. There are so many holes in this reasoning that I don’t know where to begin. One, promising to vote for X is not the same as selling your vote to X. Two, people have been voting in return for favours granted or promised since voting began. Three, paying money for a vote is not the same as promising to do something in return for a vote.

And four, when Farrugia first spoke about the purchase of votes I didn’t think he meant this rubbish. I thought he meant that somebody was actually buying up the voting documents of known Labour supporters so that they wouldn’t be able to vote. But that might be because I’m a practical, commonsensical sort and Farrugia clearly is not. If I was going to set about buying votes, I would buy voting documents to reduce the Labour vote, not give Labour voters the equivalent of a day’s wage in return for the promise that they would vote PN. I would start off from the premise that, by definition, you couldn’t possibly trust somebody like that to keep a promise.

The Pink Panther – sorry, Elephant – also revealed that he has been nagging the government to summon international observers for the general election. This idea probably came to him when he himself was an international observer at some general election somewhere (heaven knows why they wanted him, but anyway – maybe it was a general election to the Parliament of Elephants).

I hope he does contest the Labour Party leadership election. He stands no chance of winning and he will provide plenty of much needed comedic value.