Toni Abela never protested with the BA about his client Saviour Balzan and Reporter on PBS, did he?

A couple of days ago, Labour’s deputy leader Toni Abela paved the way for Labour’s ‘we object to Lou and Peppi’ press conference today by submitting print-outs of Lou Bondi’s blog to the Broadcasting Authority (see previous post).

Bear in mind that Labour’s deputy leader is Saviour Balzan’s lawyer and friend, and that Saviour Balzan has been trying his damnedest to get a current affairs talk show on PBS.

Instead, he has wound up on Favourite Channel, covering all bases at that end of the spectrum with Robert Musumeci on SmEsh.

So let me just get this straight. Or try to.

Toni Abela tries to 1. get Lou Bondi kicked out of PBS because he has a blog in which he expresses his political views, or 2. get Bondi banned from writing a political blog.

That kind of thinking sets my (literally) Red Alert antennae twitching. I’ve never been the least bit comfortable with the way Labour politicians always want to control – whether by fire, verbal intimidation, violence or protest – what people write, say and think.

Meanwhile, his client Saviour Balzan tries to get a similar show on PBS, except that there is no way in hell it can be similar because of Balzan’s personal and professional shortcomings. But Balzan expresses his political views all the time, and owns 50 per cent of two newspapers and an online news site which he has turned into the Saviour Balzan Personal Axe-Grinding Machine.

So if Saviour Balzan gets his PBS talk show, what’s he going to do? Sell Malta Today? Stop whining? Stick his hand up through the seat of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s pants and use him as a ventriloquist’s doll?

Of course not. And Toni Abela, his lawyer and deputy leader of Joseph Muscat’s Partit tal-iSkip, won’t object.

After all, we have experience to go on. Saviour Balzan ran a show called Reporter on TVM for a while, and I don’t recall his lawyer Toni Abela putting on his Labour deputy leader’s hat and rushing off to the Broadcasting Authority with two container-loads of Malta Today’s lanzit.