A deputat mexxej to be proud of
All things come to those who wait, including a place in cabinet as minister of justice
This is Victor Aquilina, who was assistant editor at The Times on Black Monday, 1979, quoted in The Sunday Times today:
“Like many others, I have had some scary experiences in my time, courtesy of Dom Mintoff’s socialists – including an overnight stay behind bars at police headquarters, as guest of Inspector Anglu Farrugia and Superintendent Gejtu Pace, and a near-miss when a fanatic drove his car into a crowd at a meeting in Kalkara – but finding myself trapped in a room in a building engulfed in flames was frightening.”
Mur ara l-Marisa Micallef ticcaccra mal-ispettur Anglu. Well, let her and other fools work hard to make him Minister of Justice. I think it’s a worse reflection on their character than it is on his. After all, he knows no better.
As for me, I think I’ll be keeping my hands clean.
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The shadow of former Inspector Anglu Farrugia is still present at the St Julian’s police station, as yourself Daphne (and others) had the misfortune to re-experience this year.
Fortunately for you Daphne, being articulate and knowing the Maltese criminal justice system, managed to get off the hook but the less articulate in our society get a criminal record.
[Daphne – Yes, and they actually pulled in some woman and schooled her in what to say against me in court. Then she screwed it up by turning to the inspector after her recital, while still in the witness box, and saying: “Hux hekk ghidtli biex nghid?” They sure know how to pick them.]
Daphne, this must have escaped my attention. Can you please gives us more information about this episode?
[Daphne – At 12.05pm I parked outside Hotel Juliani, beneath a sign which said clearly that parking was permitted after 12:00 (the sign has since been removed). I went in to lunch and came out to find a parking ticket for having ‘parked in a no parking area’. It was one of those tickets given by the police, not wardens. It wasn’t signed and it didn’t show the officer’s number, but it did show the time: 12.05pm. I walked the few metres to the police station and demanded to know why I had been given a ticket at 12.05pm when I was parked under a sign saying that parking is permissible after noon. ‘What sign?’ the policewoman asked. ‘The sign a few metres up from your station,’ I said, fighting the urge to use the adjective ‘goddamn’ before ‘station’. The policewoman took on the attitude of a nurse talking to somebody mentally deficient (‘Ara hi…’) and explained that since the law was on my side, then I needn’t worry and all I had to do was take a photo of the sign, go to court when summoned, explain the situation and all would be fine. I exploded, explaining in very clear language that this was precisely the point: I didn’t see why I should have to go to court and waste my time just because of some officer who couldn’t tell the difference between 12:00 and 00:00, or who was some raging ahdar who had spotted my number-plate and thought he would take the opportunity to harass me. After all, I said, wasn’t it rather telling that he hadn’t put down his number? Her response was ‘It wasn’t us at this station who gave you the ticket. You’ll have to go to Furjana to take up the matter there because that’s where the traffic police are.’ I told her to please stop f**king me around (not with that word, of course, but you get the gist), and explained to her that even if she was unaware of the fact, the police force is a homogeneous entity, not a group of loosely linked centres of organisation and power called police stations. If I have a complaint against the police, I can file it at any police station, and they have to deal with it – that’s customer care. I refused to leave the station until the woman behind the desk called HQ to find out which traffic policeman was on duty in the Spinola area. She got very nervous and did that thing where you pretend to dial and claim the line is busy. Then the station inspector arrived, a slob with his hands in his pockets and zero ability to inspire confidence and faith in the police force, but rather the opposite (though I must say he made a change from the even bigger slob I encountered during an experience at the same station some years before, who spoke to me with his mouth full while eating a hobza and swigging water straight out of the bottle). He threatened to arrest me for disturbing the peace and – oh blessed irony – harassing an officer. I told him to go ahead, and that I would handcuff myself if necessary, throw myself into a cell and lock the door, and then he’d have to deal with the negative coverage because I wasn’t some black immigrant or half-drunk teenager out on the razzle and he’d met his match. There was a terrific row and I left before I succumbed to the urge to whip him senseless with his spectacles. At no point did they ask me for my name, my address or my ID number, which bolstered my view that they knew who I was all along, who that car belonged to, and who issued that ticket. Despite their not asking me for my details, the next thing I know there’s a police summons and I’m being prosecuted for disturbing the peace and threatening the police. I turned up at the appointed hour and – wonder of wonders – the entire staff of the police station had absented themselves from station duty so as to be in court to testify against me, and this despite the fact that only two officers were present during the argument. One woman officer testified that she had heard me ‘from upstairs’, prompting me to point out that what she heard, unless she possesses the ability to see through floors, was a woman. They all went up one by one, and then they produced their star witness, the woman who gave the game away that she had been coached in what to say by the spettur. I could see everyone in court thinking ‘My god, she’s finished, she’s going to get a criminal record.’ I think they reckoned without the fact that I have testified in court so many times that the witness box is my second home. I gave a graphic and faithful description of what happened, together with voices and gestures, and the case was dismissed. As I came down from the stand, the officers voiced their dissatisfaction loudly, and the magistrate threatened to have one of them down for contempt of court (it was the one who recognised me through a concrete floor).]
The hazards of personalised plates. Waste of money – apart from anything else.
[Daphne – Lm30. Actually I would say it’s one of the hazards of a largely unaccountable police force. In 10 years I’ve had no other such incident.]
Daphne, can relate to your terrible experience in those terrible times. However, let’s fast forward to 1996–‘New Labour’, Sant in power. December, 1996. I’m arrested at 2:00 AM, taken to Floriana, interrogated by the Police Commissioner and his number two, no lawyers, no help. Imprisoned over night. Arraigned and sent to CCF the next morning. Charged with ‘Bribing the Prime Minister’, whom I had never met. Strip-searched and put in solitary confinement. Still no lawyer. One week later, put on bail, 10,000 Lira bond. Two weeks later, the trial. No evidence of wrong doing. Judge commented, ‘This is the most ludicrous situation I have ever witnessed’. Set free. And at least half this country wants to put these loonies back in power? Unbelievable! God help my Maltese grandchildren.
What year did this happen?
[Daphne – This year; a few months ago – the Spinola police station is notorious.]
So isn’t it about time the PN made the police force (largely) accountable?
Blimey.
Meanwhile, it looks like the prayers of the FKNK members have been answered
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/god_introduces_new_bird
Gejtu Pace was the man who actually killed Nardu Debono – but he was given a free pardon by a benevolent Nationalist government.
[Daphne – I draw a distinction between the government and Guido de Marco, but I’m not going into the reasons why. Another policeman involved was the infamous PC 710 Mangion. The number is scored into my memory: he’s the one who picked me up by the throat during a mass demonstration (I was sitting down in the front line, obviously) and punched me, after which I was arrested and kept in pitch darkness (with shit on the walls, which I could smell) for 27 hours, only to be brought out intermittently to be threatened by Anglu Farrugia, now deputy leader of the progressive party, into signing the false confession he’d written for me (replete with errors of spelling and grammar, no doubt, which should have been proof enough that it wasn’t mine). Truly, all an old whore has to do is hang around for long enough and the hymen re-knits itself.]
De Marco was never PM. And presidential pardons are given on the advice (read order) of the PM.
[Daphne – Oh how little you know.]
and then they wonder why they are so loathed.
I wonder then why then Daphne, when I posted the incident where my wife was slapped by a St Julians station policeman for parking in that same spot and the same St Julians station refused to register the incident, and sent us to the Sliema station, I wonder why you did not publish that post?
[Daphne – I don’t publish accusations levelled at third parties when they come from anonymous people. If you won’t even tell me who you are, then I take it you’re not genuine.]
If I send you a copy of our police report would you publish it without revealing any names? We were advised by a police friend to “drop” the case for our own safety, and also because this poor police sergeant had a family of his own and was fully repentant, as if this stopped him slapping my wife in full view of our frightened kids.
[Daphne – Ah, but then I’d know your name, and apparently you don’t want that, do you? You go to great lengths to hide it.]
It seems that the only families they care about are their own. I have no personal vendetta against the police, having worked with the Maltese police force myself. I can vouch that one in 10 of them are law-abiding honest officers with no super-ego or sadistic tendencies. It’s only the other 90% who give a bad name to the honest ones. And unfortunately it seems that the very worst of the worst ones are crammed into the Spinola police station where they give vent to their frustration by taking it out on immigrants, drunken students and loud-mouthed tal-pepe housewives.
[Daphne – I can’t remember the last time I was a housewife. It must have been in 1987.]
I heard many stories related to the police force during the Labour government, but nothing on Guido De Marco wrongdoings. Daphne, can you kindly enlighten me please?
[Daphne – Did I say he did anything wrong? Let’s just say that the de Marco/Fenech Adami ‘I’ll never forgive you for becoming leader instead of me’ simmering feud was the forerunner of the Dalli/Gonzi one we are seeing now.]
You are all wrong with regards to the De Marco/Fenech Adami rivalry. There were none of these shenanigans between these two leaders, the one without the other could never exist. Those two stuck together and remained together even when it was thought necessary to move De Marco to the presidency. There never were any hard feelings between these two statesmen. Let the gossips whine as much as they like. Gossip never achieved anything good.
[Daphne – It’s not gossip, Thomas. It’s fact. The difference is that De Marco was an astute politician who didn’t work to disrupt or destabilise his party out of personal bitterness. But the personal bitterness was nonetheless there, right up until the end. As late as the 1998 general election campaign, I watched members of his family come out in force on a balcony to watch him give the warm-up speech at a mass meeting, then pointedly go back inside and slam the doors shut for good measure just before Fenech Adami began to speak. They didn’t come out again.]
I think that Fenech Adami roped in Guido as deputy leader and by doing so he got the support of all the party’s followers. Keeping one’s adversaries by one’s side, sort of. They used to work a lot together at the law courts. Together with Ugo they defended the accused in the Gharghur (Wied id-Dies) murder trial.
Le, l-avuket Joe Fenech ta’ Birkirkara kien ma’ Ugo u De Marco fil-guri ta’ Wied id-Dis.
M’inhix sa nmerik Rene.
One with a pre-conceived notion tends to read too much about slamming doors…..
Ma niflahx nara wiccu. U ma nistax nifhem kif ommu semmietu Anglu, ghax kollox hlief anglu. Forsi tghodd li konna nghidu …Anglu bellu, saqajh tal-fidiferru…..komplu din min jafha.