The issue is NOT if JPO had or didn’t have any knowledge of the affair. That is as relevant to the incident in question as much as whether JPO possesses a press card or not, or as much if it is sunny or raining outside at the moment.

The issue here is, is it right that anybody should make an accusation, without leaving recourse to a reply? Pls don’t tell me that he has legal recourse, because till the matter is resolved in court, we would be in the next century.

This leads me to the next question. Why was the matter brought out at the 11th hour? Was this an exercise in cynicism?

A responsible and fair person would have offered JPO every opportunity to rebut the claims. Chucking mud around and than scrambling for the hills is infantile.

Malta expects honesty and integrity from its leaders, and in most peoples book, AS’s mismanagement of the whole sordid affair, while convincing the MLP diehards, who didn’t need any convincing in the first place, failed to impress the rest, and failed miserably at that as JPO won the moral high ground, and turned what could have been an awkward situation to his advantage.

You see, Mr. Laiviera, people hate bullies. JPO appealed to peoples’ sense of fair play, and the image of AS standing with arms akimbo under the crosscraft logo, which I would have found hilarious in any other instance, gave out the worst possible signal. He looked cold and dare I say it, inhuman, with his poker mask on, and contrasted sharply with JPO’s visible emotion.

AS, seeing he had been cornered, should have gone in damage control mode, and made a promise to JPO, in front of all and sundry, to substantiate his accusations. Even if he would have chosen Super 1, (the lion’s den as far as JPO would have been concerned) for a venue, JPO would have had to accept this poisoned chalice, or immediately fade away from politics.

If Noble would still have been around to prop up AS’s image, he would have resigned on the spot.

If Alfred Sant had made plans to discover cheese on Mars the thrust of his pre-electoral campaign (and who would be surprised?) then surely Net TV would be entitled to send a cheese-eating astronaut to represent question him at a press conference if they so wish.

As it is, the thrust of Alfred Sant`s campaign for several days was Jeffrey Pullicinno Orlando so they sent Jeffrey Pullicinno Orlando. He is pretty well placed to ask pertinent questions on that particular area of interest.

Probably much more so in Malta than the rest of the Western world, journalists do not belong to a “profession” even remotely in the same sense that lawyers and doctors are considered professionals.

Many seem to see it as stepping stone to working in PR, the civil service or in some cases, to actually becoming aspiring politicians themselves.

On Monday you can go to a job interview and, if they like you, you can be a journalist on Tuesday, even if you have no training or experience whatsoever. I was going to say that the only necessary qualification was an ability to read and write but, well, let`s not go there.

For the IMJ to say that giving Pullicino Orlando a press card is a “parody of the journalism profession” is pretty lofty talk when you consider what normally passes anyway. Let`s face it, your average Super 1 or NET News journalist is hardly a paragon of fair, objective and balanced reporting. Whatever that is supposed to be when it`s at home.

Besides in the footage Pullicino Orlando very clearly didn`t unprofessionally “disrupt” the press conference because the press conference had not even started. He quite calmly asked Sant to sit down and said that he only wanted to ask a few questions.

He became more emotional only when it was obvious that Sant was not prepared to allow the press conference to go ahead or answer his questions.

Certainly, a politician substituting a journalist with a politician has ethical considerations but I think that when the news organisation actually belongs to a political party, that becomes a bit of a moot point.

If Net TV has lost credibility then that is an issue for them and their viewers. None of whom I can imagine are that concerned with the journalistic ethics side of it. I don`t know why that would be such an issue for Alfred Sant.

The biggest red herring is that Pullicino Orlando shouldn`t have been there because he is an electoral candidate. Certainly, the principle that individual candidates should not have the advantage of disproportionate exposure on public broadcasting is commendable in theory. I don`t think this case is really a great example of the spirit behind that principle though.

Where the leader of the opposition has targetted one particular candidate`s integrity over several days, to then say that the same candidate shouldn`t appear at a press conference to ask a few questions lest he gain an unfair advantage over the other candidates is farcical.

A: Can I single you out and beat you over the head several times with this hammer?
B: Er, OK but I am going to hit you back once with this stick of celery.
A: No sorry, that would give you an unfair advantage.

http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msrv/msfullart.asp?an=19371

I happen to think that the question of how and why JPO was given a press-card he had no right to is very relevant indeed, as it shows that government bodies are being used to serve the PN.

JPO had (has) every opportunity to rebut the
allegations made against him – in the press, the media, Net TV, etc. He seems to be insisting he will only do it face-to-face. WHY?

I think it’s because he knows he cannot do it with facts but only on emotional grounds.

The documents the MLP released are simply too damning.

[Moderator – cowardly, cowardly custard, you can’t eat mustard.]

I am sure you won’t mind me clearing up a little detail.

You wrote in your previous:

“everyone is blaming Dr Sant for not confronting JPO, and we’re all forgetting how Mr Lawrence Gonzi manages to dodge the press and media”

I am sorry but it is clear here that you are excusing AS on the grounds that LG does the same. So Labour is offering more of the same? So there is no winds, lions, tigers, coaches etc of change after all? Just a new coat of change, and hey presto we have a new catchy logo?

So why should a voter find MLP attractive? You are offering nothing new, or even different.

Now to the crunch of the matter. Fact, JPO chased AS all over for the days leading up to the incident. Why didn’t AS face him? Why does one get the impression that this particular item was brought out now, when the most political damage could be made? Was it that no chance would be provided to JPO to fight the accusation?

So what was JPO to do? Accept meekly that he was being politically nuked? Or fight back? I know what I would have done, and so does everybody else. Fight back and clear his name. Only AS didn’t give him the chance, which raises questions about how accurate are the claims being made.

Let me put it another way. If I say that pigs fly, and am not ready to substantiate my claims, you may believe that I am being flexible with the truth. However if I provide irrefutable evidence of a porker whizzing by, you would be right in harboring some doubts next time you buy some perzut.

Going back to your parting statement, wherein you wrote:
“I don’t believe one should vote for MLP for just the sake of change, but at the end, the notion of having something better should already give you a different direction.”

One changes not just for the sake of it, but for something better. In this we have found a common ground. Slight problem is that MLP is not better, as according to you, it copying what what you perceive the PN is doing. So why should we accept a clone as being better?

Those words relate to powers that legislate and rule. They were not meant to describe petty Red-Blue squabbles on an island province where the Centre-Leftish Right battles the Centre-Rightish Left over the better side of an egg.

They aim to interpret aspects of tyrannical rule… the relationship between states and the people they govern through the laws they enact and the spirit in which they execute those laws.

Malta forms part of the ‘United States of Europe’ (to be), complete with the “FBI” and with one future common defence, and common wars too (that’s the Lisbon Treaty – it’s fact not “conspiracy theory”).

The Maltese government already has very limited legislative power and it will have much less power (in areas where it matters most) after the Lisbon Treaty enters into force on 01.01.2009 (with subsequent benchmarks, eg. 2014).

Moreover, the EU of which Malta forms part also forms part of Westen civilization, led by the USA (and that’s where the trends for the future lie, if only you seek).

The USA and the EU have been harmonising legislation for at least the past six years. The West is gradually uniting under TWO centralised, supra-national governments (very big and powerful). Norwell will love it, give and take racism – which does not suit the powers that rule.

So here are some more quotes. Just a quick sweep… even if they’d be lost on you. I’m sure your antennae would interpret them through your Santoscopic lenses, equipped with feelers for such fantasies as bewigged marionettes and Lions of Change.

EU Constitution?

“The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State”
– Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister, Financial Times, 21 June 2004
(He could have said it better: a centrlised federation, or as Barroso famously described it last July, “an empire”)

“The good thing about not calling it a Constitution is that no one can ask for a referendum.” – Italian Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, Vice presdient of the Convention that drafted the Constitution for a new EU which they called “European Union” (x’kummmbinazzjoni!).

Lisbon Treaty?

“Looking at the content, the result is that the institutional proposals of the constitutional treaty… are found complete in the Lisbon Treaty, only in a different order and inserted in former treaties. […] Above all, it is to avoid having referendum thanks to the fact that the articles are spread out and constitutional vocabulary has been removed. […] They are therefore imposing a return to the language that they master and to the procedures they favour, and in doing
so alienate the citizens further.”
– President of the Convention that drafted the EU Constitution, Valéry Giscard D’Estaing, Le Monde (27.10.2007).

Freedom?

Let’s look at the US past for that is where the EU future lies (give and take the Soviet added flavour):

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” – Thomas Jefferson

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the scenes.”– Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court.

“Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” – President Woodrow Wilson

“War on Terror”?

Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~ Benjamin Franklin

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised “for the good of its victims” may be the most oppressive.
– C. S. Lewis

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
– John Adams (1814)

“In a totalitarian state, it doesn’t matter what people think, since the government can control people by force using a bludgeon. But when you can’t control people by force, you have to control what people think, and the standard way to do this is via propaganda (manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusions), marginalizing the general public or reducing them to apathy of some fashion.”
— Noam Chomsky (in better days, when the bludgeon and the cage were used less, and political correctness was only starting its transformation into totalitarianism).

And from the devils’ mouths:

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.”
– Dr. Joseph M. Goebbel

“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”
– J. Edgar Hoover

“We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order”
– David Rockefeller (Him)

“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” — Adolf (Him)

So, you see, tyranny in Malta is not about Sant or Gonzi. It’s about the laws being enacted and those as yet to come, compounded the decisions to be taken by intricate powers who we not only do not know, but do not even know we ought to know.

Vote Harry, get Freddy!

I’m not justifying the way one should dodge the media and press, but as far as I know JPO is not, and has never been a journalist. What right does he have to attend a press conference, where specifically only journalists were invited? All this is going beyond the point.

I don’t believe one should vote for MLP for just the sake of change, but at the end, the notion of having something better should already give you a different direction.

So if the PN do it, it’s OK if MLP does it as well?

So exactly what changes are MLP offering?

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? Or is this all a nice smoke screen?

Don’t want to nag, and please don’t take this personally, but you are missing the woods for the trees.

The point is NOT if JPO should, or should not, have got his hands on a press card. That is irrelevant. What is extremely relevant is whether a fair and just person should have given the person he was calling corrupt, an opportunity to rebut the accusations leveled against him.

The failure of AS to be fair (or at least appear to be so) is the most worrying signal that he could have sent out to the middle of the road intelligent voter, i.e. that the wolf may have got a nice new sheep’s coat, but the teeth and all the predator instincts are still there.