Labour, Jeffrey and failed PBS talk show host Saviour: just look at this mise-en-scene
Last week, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando went to a restaurant-sponsored free lunch with my former (thank God) Standard Publications colleague Josanne Cassar and told her, among other things, that he had been coached by some mysterious unnamed person on how to respond to Alfred Sant in the 2008 election campaign.
Miss Cassar uploaded this interview on her new website (biex nikkompetu ma’ Defni) on 4 October.
On 5 October, I received a judicial summons to be in court on 10 October, as a witness FOR THE DEFENCE in the case Richard Cachia Caruana vs. Saviour Balzan, at the request of Toni Abela, Saviour Balzan’s defence lawyer.
Meanwhile, that same Toni Abela, in his role as deputy leader of the Labour Party, printed out excerpts from Lou Bondi’s blog and dispatched them in a formal complaint to the Broadcasting Authority.
I turned up in court yesterday as instructed to find that Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando was also a witness.
Jeffrey took the witness stand, Toni referred to the interview of the previous week and asked him who had coached him, and Jeffrey said ‘Joe Azzopardi’.
Meanwhile, Saviour gloated from two feet away.
The three of them hoped to get similar stuff from me and instead they got a major rocket under their collective arse.
I’m told that the lawyers in court this morning were talking about the hasla li ha Jeffrey minghand Daphne, with those who were in the packed courtroom telling those who weren’t how much they enjoyed hearing me tell him how I so regret voting for him, how he is anything but a gentleman, how he has spent the last three years backstabbing those who helped him, how he lied to me and others, and how I never wish to hear from him again.
I think that scene gave new meaning to the term ‘confrontation between witnesses’, but I certainly got off my chest everything I’ve been longing to tell him for the last two years, except that I couldn’t because I’m not speaking to him.
With that piece of information about Joe Azzopardi orchestrated into the public domain, Toni Abela took off his hat as Saviour Balzan’s defence lawyer, put on his Labour deputy leader’s hat, and scurried off to base.
The following day (today), the Labour Party called a press conference to demand Broadcasting Authority action because of the ‘news’ that Joe Azzopardi gave Jeffrey advice and because Lou writes a blog.
Immediately, Toni Abela’s client, Saviour Balzan, reported it on his news portal Malta Today:
Labour MP Gino Cauchi has asked the Broadcasting Authority to oblige the Public Broadcasting Authority in getting in line with broadcasting legislation, over its accusations of partiality by Where’s Everybody directors Lou Bondì and Peppi Azzopardi.
Speaking after an admission by Azzopardi of having coached Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to face down former Labour leader Alfred Sant in the run-up to the 2008 election, Cauchi said the BA had to enforce section 19 of the Broadcasting Act’s subsidiary legislation on standards and practice.
Except that he wasn’t speaking after an admission by Joe Azzopardi, but after an admission by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, in a case where that newspaper’s editor is the defendant and Gino Cauchi’s deputy leader is his lawyer.
And then they accuse others of conspiracies, cabals and plotting.
Tacky. Really tacky.
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Now! now! now! I hope you did not make them cry.
Now really, can’t you see the new Progressive Socialists working so hard to impress and nothing seems to go their way?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeOFf_3zO9g&NR=1
I caught a fish in Court yesterday, this big.
Except that he wasn’t speaking after an admission by Joe Azzopardi, but after an admission by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando,
You are wrong Peppi admitted coaching JPO, early this morning in an interview with Pierre Portelli on PBS. Of course you won;t bring this, you only bring my comments when they are hysterical, just as hysterical as you were in court yesterday.
[Daphne – Mamma mia, this blog really is my penance for salvation sometimes. Jeffrey the Backstabber gave Joe’s name in court yesterday, and Joe spoke about it today, 20 hours later. It’s the first ‘admission’ that counts for these political purposes, not the second – unless you’re suggesting that Labour thought Jeffrey might have been lying under oath about this too, and waited to see what Joe had to say.]
Is my English so bad that you cannot understand it?
I was just trying to correct what you said, when you said that he wasn’t speaking after and admission by Joe Azzopardi. When actually Joe Azzopardi had already admitted to coaching JPO, early this morning. So really Gino Cauchi was right in saying that he was speaking after Joe had admitted to coaching JPO.
Now if you didn’t understand my previous post, you’re going to find this one even more baffling, since it is looking complicated even to me.
[Daphne – For crying out loud, the word ‘after’ in this context does not mean chronological order, or in sequence. It means ‘AS A RESULT OF’. Jesus wept.]
Come on the way you used after in that sentence can never mean “AS A RESULT OF” I might not write English as well as I would like, but I understand it since reading English books has been my hobby since I was 6 or 7 years old.
[Daphne – ‘Reading English books has been my hobby…’. Enough said. Trust me on this one, Josephine, even though reading English books is not my hobby.]
You can criticize my English, but not my principles. I was lucky to have been brought up in a family where politics was discussed with an open mind. Sometimes my parents spoke in favour of the government and sometimes against. I never knew which party they voted for.
[Daphne – Why, were they too embarrassed to tell you, or were they afraid you would blab and get them into some kind of trouble? I find these situations really strange. I am not interested in your principles. They’re not under discussion, so don’t feel the need to drag them into it.]
I can see the good and the bad in both parties. What turned me and many others against your party is the way Nicole’s silly outburst was treated.
[Daphne – It’s not my party, Josephine/Grace. I just vote for it. I don’t have shares in it, work for it, or run it. And the way Miss Abela Garrett’s silly outburst was treated by the Nationalist Party is that it wasn’t treated at all, except with a polite press release by the man she insulted, saying that students will be students.]
Had she been ignored, many might have seen her as a heroin, others would have said she was very rude and all would have forgotten all about it after a few days. But the PN and their bloggers Fascist style wanted to make sure nothing like that would ever happen again, so they pressured the TOM to sack her journalist friend who was still on probation.
[Daphne – RUBBISH. I think you have become so accustomed to low standards in Super One and Malta Today, that you think other media organisations don’t worry about protecting their reputation. This issue was strictly between the new reporter and his employers – nobody else. Common sense should tell you that.]
Now Matthew Bonanno is a very popular guy, everyone knows he had no political leanings, so all youths who were still considering if they should vote PN or not have decided on the not.
[Daphne – How odd, not to have political views at 23. Very strange. That’s the age when we are most opinionated.]
As for my English books, I know it was a slip, Maltese is my forte and when writing English I do tend to slip, unless I’m careful. I’m not ashamed of this fact, just like some are not ashamed to write very bad Maltese, much worse than my English.
[Daphne – You should comment in Maltese then. It’s allowed.]
What worries me is that we have much more serious issues to worry about, with the Euro on its knees and another bailout with Maltese taxpayer’s money in the pipeline .And yet these stooges find the time and effort to play toy soldiers.