In Consie we trust
Published:
February 8, 2010 at 11:39pm
To all those who think – foolishly – that the private lives of politicians and public officers are irrelevant –
Would prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami have lost his moral authority if news broke that he’d been having a secret affair with a tart or a magistrate?
Would the referendum and general election campaigns of 2003 have been derailed if any such story broke then?
The answer to both questions is yes.
Now ask yourself why.
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True… veru true.
Totally agree with your point, Daphne, and appreciate your question is hypothetical. However, the two sleaze bags under scrutiny inhabit a very different, very ugly, personal world than did the former PM.
And it’s by choice, not by accident. It makes you wonder why they’re getting all virginal now – and I don’t just mean the smutty stars of the show themselves. There are all those crusaders for the truth – columnists, reporters and the papers they write for – who are reaching for the smelling salts and claiming they only know what was written because ‘someone sent it to me’ and that they are variously shocked, disgusted or moved to tears.
Moved to tears, that is, that someone bothered to say out loud what lots of people knew already anyway, and not the disgraceful implications of that smutty behaviour.
What these public figures do in their private lives show what they really are. if you’re being a goody-goody on the job and a tart in private only tells me one thing.
1. Think before you act.
2. Better be honest and own up.
3. Stop all the drama and all the lying.
Daphne, I’m glad you have the guts to tell people what you really think. We need more honest women like you nowadays!
Dr Eddie Fenech Adami delivered us from a corrupt and evil Labour government because of his moral authority.
The morals of magistrate Herrera are not worth mentioning in the same sentence.
I used the same argument during a conversation this week. Suppose we wake up tomorrow morning to see similar pictures of another magistrate/judge on Facebook. Think of a magistrate whom everybody admires for his integrity and you suddeny see him partying with Super One or Net people. All hell will break loose. So why not this time?
Maybe some people are too young to remember that members of the judiciary hardly acknowledged you (even if you were a friend) if they met you in Republic Street. It was a simple nod and ‘good morning’. I don’t expect them to behave so rigidly today but then extremes are always wrong.
Even John Terry, who plays for the England National Football Team, has been punished for having an alleged affair with the ex girlfriend of a fellow team mate. Now players who play for their national teams are not even paid, as it is considered their duty to do so, yet they are subject to public scrutiny.
Just after my retirement from my post of Personnel and Administration Manager of Malta Drydocks I was appointed a Chairman of the Industrial Tribunal. When I told my good friend then Mr Justice Hugh Harding (now Chief Justice Emeritus) his first words to me were: “Your social life will change – you will have to watch your back!”
He explained to me that once you are in a position to judge and decide on other people life becomes lonely. He added that a lawyer is among those of his own kind able to discuss openly all that is going around them.
A judge, magistrate or even perhaps a lowly industrial tribunal chairman finds him/herself in a lonely position and would be wise to take Hugh Harding’s advice – as I did, thank God.
“would be wise to take Hugh Harding’s advice”
Well said, but unfortunately it’s a bit late for that in at least one case, isn’t it?
I think I may be missing something here. I am under the impression that all of the magistrate’s shenanigans have been long-running, and this isn’t her first party with these people. So her position has long been compromised.
What I can’t understand is: why all this muck raking now?
[Daphne – Better late than never. Relying on Malta2Dej to do it was fast becoming a waste of time.]
Don’t get me wrong. I tend to agree that a person in her position should tone down her lifestyle a notch and what have you, but this has been – apparently – going on for ages. So whatever is fanning the flames of righteousness in your bosom is probably not concern for the country’s judicial system.
[Daphne – Yes, actually it is. I have long felt outrage at the way certain magistrates conduct themselves with nobody able to touch them, nobody willing to write about them, and general complacency among lawyers and others who appear before them. It’s horrendous.]
And though I applaud an outcome that would strengthen the credibility of our judiciary I would hesitate to ascribe any deep-rooted moral motivation to this initiative.
As they would have told us at school “Right answer, wrong workings”.
[Daphne – Your reasoning is off. So your solution would be to let it run on and on and on and on, for the simple reason that it has done so for many years already, and any attempt to stop it now must therefore be suspect and must, in turn, be stopped itself.]
George’s son told you to take it easy.
Do you share a surname?
I fully agree with you. Do you think, however, that she’s the only member of the judiciary, or the only public officer having (or having repeatedly had) a clandestine affair, while appearing happily married? Malta is based on hypocrisy, while the Maltese profess themselves to be such devout Catholics that they refuse divorce, they go have affairs on the side.
It’s a national sport, a status symbol. It’s pretty much like driving SUVs in 20 miles of island – in Valletta of course where the roads are one metre wide – or sending your daughter to ballet even if she looks like Dumbo in a tutu, or going “skiing” on the Alps even if all you do is sit in a bar drinking vodka and bombardino for ten days.
The reason that the press attacks this blog and the way you write is pretty much linked to same mindset. The way you write is extremely brazen and hard, and is conveyed in a style that one may or may not appreciate. However, it’s the reaction to the content of your writing that, in my opinion, is what is most interesting.
It is basically what everybody in Malta is saying behind everybody’s back, but then once it is in black on white everybody distances themselves from it. Not only, they try to make you pay for saying in public what they’ve been whispering about for years.
Unfortunately it will always be like this. Malta is an island where everybody is watching each other and where – for a certain part of society which is fast degenerating – all that matters are possessions which, in the minds of these mediocre persons are somehow intrinsically linked to their social standing.
To achieve this I’ve seen many people willing to sacrifice everything, their integrity, their honesty, their time with their spouses, their time with their children, and of course raising monsters with mega complexes – to make up the next generation. Very sad, indeed.
your retarded!
Like your grammar ans spelling.
Dear Daphne – just be careful because these are people who can go to great lengths. You have proved that you are too much for them, and that most important of all, you are right!
I suggest to all commenting here that if and when the time would be required and necessary, we would all stand up to be counted in your favour and not let anybody harm you for exposing the truth! YOU ARE GREAT!
Very true, Daphne…we desperately need more journalists like yourself, so keep up your good work! Politicians and public officers should set the example, and if they derail, then how can we trust them? Our law court need to be sieved clean.
Everything is possible and acceptable with the ‘progressivi’ and the ‘moderati’. They can take part in ‘libertinagg u debuxxar’, expect that nobody can bring it to light, and then they go to the police for the protection of their integrity should somebody expose them.
The police should spend their valuable time protecting honest citizens and not that section of society which thinks that it is above scrutiny. The Ministry of Justice owes us an explanation asap.
As regards that floor rag of MaltaToday, had all this been on the side of the PN, they would have been calling for the resignation of Dr. Gonzi and his government. Musumeci is being protected simply because his affair is with somebody from the other side of the political spectrum. Had it been otherwise they would have dumped on him without mercy especially now on the eve of the casual election.
Tricky one. Let me put this way: I’d still have voted Yes, and then voted PN, because getting an EU passport was the overriding concern. When the sordid private affairs of politicians and public officers become uncomfortable, you will often find that they had no moral authority to start with. I mean it’s not like our judiciary or political class is a shining example of moral rectitude. We KNOW they swim in a sea of sleaze. When, occasionally, the details surface, I’ve yet to see anyone going “No! Not him/her!”.
[Daphne – Yes. The question our Cons should be asking herself is ‘Why was nobody surprised to see these things written about her?’ Maybe it’s because there was no integrity to protect.]
“Why was nobody surprised to see these things written about her?”
Aha! Because these things have been discussed to death at dinner parties and over pints and shots, but have never been written. Until Daphne came along.
Right, everybody is saying “Madonna, kif avvilita” and never “jahasra, kemm gidbet fuqha”. That should suffice, shouldn’t it?
Hey, now don’t you go and give Consie any ideas.
Daphne, this week I received three emails. One from Sacramento, California, another from Kent, UK and today from Sydney. The magistrate has become a household topic in three different continents. These emails questioned the abuse of power by the police in Malta. Maltese from far away are questioning democracy in Malta. They feel that freedom of speech is lacking big time in Malta. Nothing has changed from the 1970s and 1980s.
How can the minister of justice look the other way when the police in Malta treats a discussion about the behaviour of a magistrate on the blog as a criminal act? The primary function of a minister of justice is to protect the laws in Malta: the right for free speech which is being threatened.
Daphne, here is another irony. Many journalists and ordinary people around the world commented on the computer blogs about the behaviour of the president of the USA. The police didn’t investigate the people who were expressing their opinion on the blogs but rather investigated the president. Only in Malta… we never learn.
“with a tart or a magistrate?”
Can’t a magistrate be a tart?
I take it that was a rhetorical question.
My God, I could just marry you. Pity I never met one such as golden-mouthed as yourself. Keep on rocking (Kill Bill style).
Hey Ben, get in line please! And Matt, you are so right. I seriously think that this episode could be an eye-opener par excellence, because frankly it looks as if the police are in control, and that to me this is even more worrying than Joseph Muscat and his idiots lurking in the background.
What amazes me is the way that the PL qabduha minn sieqa, and are actually on the side of a controversial magistrate and the Nazi tactics of the police.
‘qabduha minn sieqa’
That’s their usual way.
They are also on the side of a Nationalist politician, and yet they fail to state to their die-hards that the only reason for this is because he is the magistrate’s bedmate.
The problem isn’t that people think that politicians and public officers can do as they please in their private lives. The REAL problem is politicians and public officers who are arrogant enough to think they can do as they please in their private lives and stupid enough to believe that what we think doesn’t matter.
People may not think this explicitly, but a politician with a steady family life is perceived as someone who can devote all his or her energies to the job.
Even Alfred Sant with his monk’s cell of a home and that spiritiera in his kitchen (brrr!) made us feel that we were in the hands of a weird and lonely man. There’s nothing like a spouse and children to offer support – and to release the trapped air that causes swelled heads.
Perhaps I’m the early riser here, but this morning I got the shock of my life to find out that this web site was gone! The message was that the website was no longer with this company (my words). I was going to ask for an explanation to an email which was available on the site but had no time.
IN CONSIE WE TRUST……………….OTHERS PAY CASH
What I cannot understand is all the hullabaloo about the Realta’ censorship, (about a piece of crap article), and then no public figure had the guts to publicly defend Daphne. How is it that many persons wrote or spoke in public in favour of an editor to publish whatever he liked, and then no one dares to condemn the media attacks against someone who dared to publish facts about a magistrate!
Sometimes I wonder if issues in Malta are only created if only ‘certain’ people are involved.
Quo Vadis Malta
For a moment there, I thought I read “In Consie we thrust”. It must be the effect of all the Consie jokes wherever one goes.