Matthew Vella, Saviour Balzan and the Labour Party: 2 + 2 = 19

Matthew Vella, editor of Malta Today's internet site

Malta Today’s internet site has told us it has “received various reports” that print-outs of Joseph Muscat’s and Sabrina Agius’s emails to each other have been sent to people’s houses in brown envelopes with typed addresses.

Their intrepid reporters rang the Labour Party, which described the situation as “a cowardly act from the Nationalist Party, which has embarked on the biggest ever anonymous mail shot.”

You would think that’s a bit of an oxymoron – “an anonymous act by the Nationalist Party” – but apparently not. But I expect little better from people who still translate literally from Maltese into English and then don’t bother to get it checked.

A cowardly act BY, dolts, not FROM (“att fahxi u godard mil-Partit Nazzjonalista”).

Malta Today’s reporters also rang Sabrina Agius, who told them that she thinks this is the act of a “sick mind”. A waste of time, effort and stamps when you know they’re available all over the internet, yes, but a sick mind?

The Labour Party took it further. The Nationalist Party “cannot win on the arguments, so they resort to predictable scare tactics”, it said.

Oh, indeed. And the obvious never occurs to them: that this is the typical act of a private person who has it in for Sabrina Agius (I think this more likely than having it in for the leader of the Opposition) and who does the typical thing of posting things around in anonymous envelopes.

I receive missives like this about a wide variety of people all the time, and they go straight in the bin.

You have to be daft to imagine that the Nationalist Party has lined up a room of interns to print out those emails or photocopy them, stuff them into brown envelopes after first having typed out random addresses, and mail them off.

The Nationalist Party put those emails on the internet, for crying out loud, after which every media vehicle picked them up and talked about them.

You’ll even find them on YouTube.

So there’s another clue: whoever used those brown envelopes doesn’t really know the power of the internet.

The Nationalist Party categorically denied any connection to those mail-shots.

This didn’t stop Malta Today’s readers, whose analytical skills are typical of those who vote Labour and read Maltastar (which Malta Today has substituted among this target audience).

Here are some of their comments.

POSTED BY: maltipur — 19/11/2011 22:19:39
Character assassination has started as a prelude to the forthcoming election. The NP has always been the party of the xewwiexa.

POSTED BY: niko001 — 19/11/2011 21:56:47
As I was one of those persons that received the emails via maltapost, I really thank the person who sent them due to the fact that they opened my eyes and in the next election I will vote for Labour.

POSTED BY: CJohn Zammit — 19/11/2011 17:06:36
“Borg Olivier added that the email correspondence is already in the public domain …” In the “public domain”? Looks like another bigwig does not know what constitutes the “Public Domain”. Just because it is widely known and/or publicly accessible — such as, Facebook, or this portal — it does not mean that it is in the Public Domain.

POSTED BY: jesmond — 19/11/2011 16:21:27
a bunch of cowards.

POSTED BY: jesmond — 19/11/2011 16:21:04
a bunch of cowards.

POSTED BY: jesmond — 19/11/2011 16:19:42
a bunch of cowards.

POSTED BY: Solidarity — 19/11/2011 16:12:16
Election seems close. Back stabbing has initiated