Il-'vindication' ta' John Dalli
John Dalli with fellow Gaddafi regime expert, Labour's international secretary AST
Arab affairs expert and EU commissioner John Dalli told us that Libyans have a problem because of their religion which preaches ‘vindication’ while ‘ours’ preaches ‘forgiveness’.
The word he was looking for is ‘vengeance’, but he found the Maltese ‘vendikazzjoni’ instead. Not bad for an EU commissioner, most particularly one who apparently claims that English is his mother tongue.
As for preaching forgiveness rather than ‘vindication’ – why yes, he’s a good example of that, isn’t he, with his seven years of kvetching and his desire for revenge.
This is from the biography on his official website, johndalli.eu. And here ‘vindication’ is used correctly, even if not appropriately, which sort of means that our man in Europe has the two sentiments (and acts) – vindication and vengeance – confused and conflated.
VindicationOn the 29th November 2007, the Prime Minister gave a press conference together with Mr. Dalli in which he declared that all the allegations and insinuations made against John Dalli were baseless and false.
He appointed John Dalli as his Special Advisor on matters of Finance and Economy.
And here is some more from his bio (“Mr. John Dalli….”):
Private Consultancy.
Mr. John Dalli is now running a consultancy organisation offering services in:
1.Assisting commercial organisation to develop strategies to meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities of a changing geo-political environment.
2.Introducing and facilitating the establishment of western companies in the North African Economies especially Libya
The company, John Dalli & Associates has offices in Malta and Tripoli.
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He has been whining for seven years. He must have been drinking a lot of vin de cation.
Whining and dinaring.
No wonder he thought the protesters wrote and spoke ‘perfect English’.
In his next news conference can Commissioner Dalli please give further details on the one-billion-euro-green-energy-project ignored by GonziPN.
Is the man hallucinating, gone senile, or is sufferring from post traumatic stress disorder on the seventh anniversary of losing the PN leadership race?
Can some expert clinician please diagnose.
“Not bad for an EU commissioner, most particularly one who apparently claims that English is his mother tongue.”
All Maltese who work with the EU institutions are automatically listed as having Maltese and English as their mother tongue – since the two are national languages.
This means that we are never tested on our fluency in either language but then have to take tests/lessons in any language that we claim to know.
Consequently, if you are Maltese by ancestry and have a passport to prove it but lived in any country but Malta all of your life and spoke nothing but, say, French at home you will still be listed as “speaks Maltese and English” since they are “your mother tongue”.
This automatic let’s-skip-the-tests-because-obviously-you-must-speak-the-language-if-you’re-one-of-them attitude is curious but most certainly based upon ignorance.
I’m not saying that the Maltese working with the institutions do not speak Maltese – or English – but being more fluent in one than another is not uncommon. Yet, all Maltese are equal in the eyes of the institutions and all are fluent in these two languages even if it can be demonstrated that a particular person is not.
Kafka-esque, to say the least.