Cosy, cosy – Saviour and Consie

You’d have thought that after the major tip-off I gave them yesterday, Malta Today would have picked up the story of how Consuelo Herrera is being investigated by the Commission for the Administration of Justice, which has received reports of alleged corruption in real estate deals.

But no.

Instead, Saviour Balzan today defends Consuelo and harangues me for ‘attacking’ her. How dare I attack a magistrate? It’s wrong.

Listen up, Saviour, and start thinking straight. I’m writing all this about her not DESPITE the fact that she is a magistrate, but BECAUSE she is a magistrate.

If she were not a magistrate, I wouldn’t give a f**k what she does. Who cares? But she’s a magistrate, and so I do. And guess what – it turns out that so does the rest of the country.

People would like reassurance that those who sit in judgement over them do not lead lives of debauchery while developing property as their main line of business, or throwing parties where talcum powder is a main feature of the event.

More to the point, people are SICK of this sleaze. Over the last few years, we have watched as the respect in which magistrates have long been held has been systematically eroded by the debauched and sleazy behaviour of just a few of them. And they are out of control precisely because there is nothing and nobody who can control them.

They cannot be removed or disciplined, which is as it should be because you cannot have a situation in which judges and magistrates are subjected to the whims of the government or a government-appointed board. They have to be impeached through a two-thirds parliamentary vote.

When this was attempted with Carol Peralta, it failed – and so he was kicked upstairs instead, a promotion for bad behaviour, because there was no alternative.

It is up to judges and magistrates themselves to behave impeccably and to understand that they must be dignified and discreet at all times. This is not about broken marriages. It is perfectly possible to come out of a marriage and to start a new relationship without giving cause for scandal or making oneself the object of contempt and ridicule. I can think of at least one magistrate, now a judge, who has done so.

With her behaviour, Consuelo Herrera has gone too far. When you are a magistrate, it is not enough to do your job efficiently and well. You are a magistrate at all times, even when you are not in court.

When a magistrate is seen, for example, wearing very ill-advised clothing and with her underwear on display, cavorting at a party where others are using cocaine, there are consequences.

The main consequence is an erosion of respect, and out of that comes an erosion of trust.

Whatever Saviour Balzan owes Consuelo, he should seek to redress the balance so that he is free of any demands she might make of him. For a start, he could get rid of that ridiculous MEPA Watch column in his newspaper, written by the man she sleeps with and the last man on earth who should be ‘watching MEPA’.

The role of a newspaper like Malta Today should be to go after those who sit in judgement over us, like Consuelo, and not to go after those who don’t hold public office, like me.

By going after me – a mere columnist like himself – and protecting Consuelo Herrera and her boyfriend, Saviour Balzan is eating away at the little credibility he has left.

For some reason best known to himself, though I suspect it has to do with a shared contempt for the prime minister, Saviour Balzan has now thrown in his lot with a new coterie that is taking shape, in which the key movers are Consuelo and her boyfriend and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, who has featured often and positively in Malta Today, and even in its associated magazines, where he was asked to choose his dream dinner party guests and he picked Consuelo.

“She’s so bubbly,” he said of her. I’ll bet she’s ‘bubbly’, though that wouldn’t be the precise word I’d use to describe her. She’s not bubbly at all. She’s pathologically cold, nasty and calculating – a character assessment that will be confirmed by anyone and everyone who has known her since her schooldays. That is exactly why she behaves the way she does.

Robert Musumeci has yet to discover just how coldly calculating she is.

Might I suggest another story that Saviour Balzan would like to investigate: exactly who shopped Victor Scerri, Consuelo’s boyfriend’s client, to the Labour Party and the press.

He might be surprised at the results.