No, Cyrus did not download porn
This was my column in The Malta Independent last Thursday. Marvic Camilleri has since dismissed his lawyers because of their connections to the Labour Party
The Labour internet elves, who in the last general election were Sliema housewives refusing to vote for intollerant (two Ls) Gonzi because of the price of electricity, are back in force.
And this time they’re passionate about gay issues and refusing to vote for intolerant (they’ve since learned how to spell it) Gonzi.
Now they’ve taken a brief and sudden break from learning how to spell ‘heterosexual’ – why bother, when you can write ‘str8t’ – to put about the lie that Cyrus Engerer was busted for downloading pornography at home.
And because now we’re all liberal and the 1960s have hit certain parts of Maltese society at last, pornography is what ‘everybody’ does for fun and Gonzi still “lags tollerence”.
So let’s get one thing straight (str8t?) before we start on the hot topic of the moment.
Cyrus Engerer was not busted for downloading pornography. He was busted for raiding his ex-boyfriend’s computer for naked sex photographs starring that ex-boyfriend, and emailing them out to various friends and associates including, so it appears, the ex boyfriend’s employers, as an act of vengeance after the relationship ended.
He was busted not because anybody in the Nationalist Party tipped off the police. He was busted because the man featured in the private naked sex photographs put in a formal request to the police to investigate and act.
His lawyers are former policemen and active members of the Labour Party: Vince Micallef and Andy Ellul. They are often seen and photographed with Joseph Muscat.
Vince Micallef is part of a close circle of friends who include Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, and he is a regular visitor at the home of Robert Musumeci and Magistrate Herrera. This is not to implicate any of them in anything or in any way, but the facts have to be laid out.
Shortly after the report was made last year, insinuations and unveiled threats began to be made against Cyrus Engerer via a poisonous and anonymous pro-Labour website which was set up for the declared purpose of threatening and slandering people who stand in the way of the Labour cause.
These were along the lines of “we know something about you, Cyrus, and you’d better watch out and behave or we’ll release the information at the appropriate moment” (the language, however, was garbled). I remember reading them and thinking how liberal and progressive Labour can’t get past the ‘pufta’ mindset despite its best efforts.
Now those posts have been deleted, though there are still cached traces which point to their one-time existence.
So why was Mr Engerer charged so long after the report was made? The internet elves, believing that everybody is as half-brained as they are, would have it that the Nationalist Party pounced and instructed the police to act when he left them.
Apart from the fact that this reasoning stems from the same mindset as ‘if you leave me I’ll circulate dirty pictures of you as revenge’, it just doesn’t make sense.
First, the Nationalist Party – or government – can’t instruct the police in any such way.
Secondly, if even an internet ‘elve’ is able to work out the obvious conclusions of such hellishly stupid behaviour, then rest assured that the Nationalist Party can do so, too.
And thirdly, it’s telling that the elves are more shocked by the idea that the Nationalist Party/police pounced out of revenge than by the implication therein: that the Nationalist Party/police protected him by failing to act for so long.
The place to look for the reasons why this happened is within the police force, and the Police Commissioner has done the right thing in asking the prime minister to hold a formal inquiry.
The fact remains that Cyrus Engerer was interrogated by the police while his star was in the ascendant at the Nationalist Party, when he spoke at the party’s general conference in June. He concealed the fact of his interrogation from the party bosses.
On 9 July he spoke to the police and asked them to expedite proceedings against him. Six days later, he rang the press and told them he was resigning from the Nationalist Party and moving to Labour.
Then the story about his police charges broke, as he knew it would because he had asked the police to speed things up.
Some might see the Labour Party as being hoist by its own petard in having prised away a ‘trophy gay’ from the Nationalists only to have him explode in its face. But I find it hard to believe that Joseph Muscat and his key people did not know about the police complaint filed by his ex-lover, given some of the people involved.
What I think is this: that Cyrus Engerer was deliberately prised away and deliberately blown up, though it remains to be seen by whom, and that driven by what is apparently a streak of self-sabotage, Mr Engerer himself participated in his own destruction, not least – if the allegations are true – with the spiteful act of making a lover’s private pictures public.
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The mores and morality of Maltese society have long been heading south. This trend applies across the board.
Our Malta Cattolicissima e Nobilissima (with apologies to my mountaineering mentor Achille Ratti) now qualifies as louche or very louche.
We are veritably being overrun by sleaze.
The cause of this national debauchery is mainly attributable to the unqualified economic success of twenty-five years of PN administration. As Harold Macmillan put it, we have never had it so good.
We are long overdue for a change.
Then we can start once again concentrating on basics like unemployment, poverty, corruption, nepotism, indhil barrani, water bowsers, electricity cuts, bulk-buying, frame-ups, student-haddiem, doctorless hospitals, etc.
The sooner the better.
You’re right of course. My son would be just out of university by then and oh how I’ve always wanted for him to be employed by some para-statal company or other.
How I yearn to see him in Dejma uniform or busy ‘jizra’ u jrabbi’. Or he might prefer the thrills of fixing things as he sails on the ocean as he makes a career for himself in ‘Bahhar u sewwi’ .
There’s nothing quite like the sea breeze as he spends summers beach cleaning or sorting marketable potatoes from decaying ones. Oh what a bright future beckons. What nostalgia.
God help us, we don’t all deserve this you know.
I completely agree with you Anthony, especially the last paragraph. I think that when you have something good you’ll take for granted, then when you lose it you start appreciating it. Good luck to PL and bad luck to Malta.
One thing has come out for sure from this mess: Cyrus is not a gentleman.
Neither is Marvic a gentleman for making indecent pictures ie porn.
Please explain what’s indecent about Marvic’s pictures, provided he did not share them with anyone else. Just to be clear, I’m not into that stuff, but I would like to know why you would call it “indecent”.
Old fashioned saying: “Id-dnub ma jorqod qatt”
Cyrus Engerer: from our little local gay icon to gay basher (that’s how he acted with his ex lover).
Woah this is totally being blown out of proportion. What he did was immoral and wrong, and yes he should be judged for it and expect some backlash. But my god it doesn’t automatically cancel out everything else about him.
[Daphne – Matthew, it doesn’t cancel out what he’s done. That isn’t the point. The point is that is gives great insight into the person’s character which, at 29, is pretty much what it is going to be for the rest of his life. The character traits which make a person prone to vindictiveness and poor judgement in his personal life are going to make him or her prone to vindictiveness and poor judgement throughout. There are levels of this, and Cyrus’s actions are not at a minor or petty level at all, but made more serious still by the fact that he behaved as he did even while holding a political position, which makes it incumbent on him to hold to highr standards even in his private life, if for no other reason than not to embarrass or compromise those who put their trust in him, including the people who voted for him and who are now very upset. I’ll take you through it step by step.
1. He is deputy mayor of one of the biggest local councils. He is well-liked by the Nationalist Party and has a bright political future. Electors in Sliema really like the way he talks and presents himself.
2. He is one of very few politicians who are openly gay, which makes him a ‘poster-boy’ and therefore with even greater responsibilities to behave impressively and change, rather than reinforce, prejudice against homosexuals.
3. His boyfriend throws him out of the flat. He uses the key he hasn’t yet returned to let himself into the flat while his ex-boyfriend is at work, and when, presumably, he should be at work too.
4. He goes through his ex-boyfriend’s hard drive, copies photographs of his ex-boyfriend having sex with unnamed men, and leaves with the pen-drive, covering up traces that he has been there and done that.
5. He emails the photographs first to his ex-boyfriend’s boss, a woman, who is utterly horrified. He then emails them to his ex-boyfriend’s office colleagues. Then to friends they have in common. The photographs are, apparently, extreme and chosen to cause maximum damage to his ex boyfriend.
6. His ex-boyfriend reports him to the police.
7. In the media furore that ensues several months later, Engerer does not deny the accusations nor make any attempt to clear his name. Instead he talks about being got back at and seeks to portray himself, with the help of the Labour Party and Malta Today, as a victim. He offers no words of apology or of contrition.
8. His psychology is so much like Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s that it is striking.]
Like if someone has an affair. There’s also the legal aspect but again we should put things in perspective.
[Daphne – There is no ‘legal aspect’ in having an affair. Having an affair is not a crime.]
It’s wrong, and you should expect some backlash, but it’s not like I wouldn’t consider voting for him just because of this.
[Daphne – Matthew, you have to distinguish between having an affair with someone and trying to destroy that someone through criminal action.]
No way. I don’t care (significantly enough) about what he does to his ex-boyfriend, I care about his political ideals.
[Daphne – That’s because you’re 20 years old. Start getting worried if in a few years’ time you still think that way.]
Let’s put it this way Matthew: “Would you like this kind of character to represent you in your local council let alone as an MP in parliament?”
Are we so desperate to choose him instead of others who are straight as an arrow?
Would you prefer a corrupt womaniser like Silvio Berlusconi instead of Prodi to represent you?
Just look at what happened to Dominique Strauss-Kahn – attacking a hotel maid does not have anything to do with the running of a country, or the world bank, but still he had to resign from his job and his presidency candidature.
Matthew, you couldn’t care less about what this dangerous cretin does to his ex-boyfriend. You would care a great deal if that boyfriend was your son, or even just your friend.
Please grow up and also pull your socks up.
[Matthew Vella – It’s wrong, and you should expect some backlash, but it’s not like I wouldn’t consider voting for him just because of this].
That means you have failed to grasp the gravity of the situation. I wouldn’t trust such a person to clean my house under supervision, let alone represent me in parliament.
And I would suggest this article, gets straight to the point:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110731/blogs/a-serious-case-of-cyrusitis.378192
What point exactly?
I suppose his point is that he agrees with Alison Bezzina that giving yourself €600 a week is worse than vindictively sending pornographic photos of your ex-lover to his boss and colleagues.
Sane men and women beg to differ.
“Giving yourself €600 a week is worse”
It would have been very bad had they been paid while doing another job, Matthew.
Shouldn’t a full time minister get at least a 40 K salary? I don’t know the exact salary.
Instead of looking at the increase, look at the salary packet and working conditions.
I hate repeating – may I remind you that ministers cannot do another job like they used to do, so for example we cannot have our health minister Dr Joe Cassar examining his clients in a clinic like Vincent Moran used to do in his private clinic in the 70s.
That means that Dr Cassar has to be decently remunerated, unlike Dr Moran who was a part-time minister and family doctor.
How much should a minister get paid for his work?
People shouldn’t take pictured of themselves having sex. It’s not wise.
Yes, it’s unwise, but who would think that someone would enter illegally into one’s house and steal the pictures?