Civil Liberties Jeff wants journalists jailed – you know, just like in Turkey
I'll bet you anything he doesn't agree with Jeffrey.
This was my column in The Malta Independent, yesterday.
When I criticised our president for planning ‘missionary work’ in Peru – put that in context and imagine somebody else’s head of state coming to Malta for missionary work, with all its patronising implications and diplomatic stresses – Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando rushed to his Facebook wall to upload the archaic and undemocratic law which says that those who criticise the head of state should be prosecuted.
‘The police should take action against DCG’ he screamed on his wall, in Maltese so that the sort of friends he has now would properly understand (and still they didn’t).
Scratch this man and you get an authoritarian bigot and petty despot, whose idea of civil liberties begins and ends with the divorce legislation he needed for himself and with gay marriage which he thinks will make him ‘cool’.
Perhaps in the circles in which he moves, cool people are those who insist that the police arrest, interrogate and prosecute journalists who criticise the head of state, after which they are imprisoned by judgement of the court.
In the circles in which I move, that makes you a bit of a freak or a pariah. But there you go. I’ve always said that Jeffrey’s instincts are Labour, which has long been the wrong sort of right-wing.
His Facebook friends roared with approval, though they have scant concept of the notions which underpin democracy and civil liberties beyond Mintoff’s decriminalisation of sodomy, for which the avowed friend of the world’s dictators had his own reasons and those had nothing to do with the civil liberties he despised.
A few even justified the law on the grounds that respect for the head of state must be legally imposed through fear of imprisonment. A couple even joined Jeffrey’s chorus that the law is the law and I shouldn’t think I am ‘above it’.
How idiotic. These are the champions of civil liberties in Malta? Jeffrey and his Mintoffian friends need to have it pointed out to them that true liberals – and face it, you don’t even have to be a liberal but just somebody who likes living in the democratic ‘west’ – will oppose a law that belongs in the world’s worst regimes and call on parliament to have it repealed.
Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando is a legislator. If he wishes to prove how democratic and liberal he is, then he should start by bringing before parliament a motion to have any law repealed which allows for police action against and imprisonment of journalists and others who exercise freedom of expression.
These include the aforementioned law against criticising the head of state, and more particularly, the law on criminal libel. There is a civil law which deals with the latter, and in contemporary Europe, politicians and public figures should not be using the police to act against those who have criticised them.
But they find it convenient, becuase they have nothing to lose if their complaint turns out to be frivolous and unjustified – the court does not penalise them for vexatious behaviour – but the very act of bringing in the police to prosecute your critics constitutes a form of harassment which some politicians and other politically motivated persons find very acceptable in their war against journalists who hold them up to ridicule and criticism.
Civil Liberties Jeff clearly does not think so.
Try to imagine London’s Metropolitan Police arresting and prosecuting the Sex Pistols back in the 1970s, when they shot to fame with a punk anthem called God Save the Queen (“she ain’t no human being”). Britain’s head of state has been mocked on every comedy show imaginable, lampooned in cartoons, magazines and newspapers, and has been the subject of urine-soaked ‘works of art’.
All of this would doubtless make Civil Liberties Jeff very uncomfortable. But then I can’t imagine him, as a British MP, demanding on his Facebook wall the prosecution of one of the umpteen columnists who say the Queen shouldn’t have done this or that.
He’d know better than to do it, if only to avoid the mockery he himself would then be subjected to. But Jeffrey operates in Malta, where his new constituency of Mintoffjani is just as bigoted and authoritarian as he is.
The truth is, you see, that Jeffrey is really rather un-European.
Right now in Spain, the head of state is under heavy fire in all newspapers for going big-game hunting in Botswana as his people starve (so to speak). Those newspapers found out only when his hip was broken in a fall and he had to be flown back for surgery.
Spain has a long, long history of fascism and even a real dictator called General Franco, but what do you know, the Spanish are allowed to criticise their head of state (now) and I can’t see any MPs calling for newspaper writers to be imprisoned for doing so. But then I don’t speak Spanish, so I might have missed something.
Back home, I imagine Jeffrey thinks it will do absolute wonders for George Abela’s (Labour) reputation if the police prosecute me for criticising his choices. That’s the little, smoggy world he lives in now.
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I wonder if any of our horde of intrepid journalists will be going on this trip to assidiously record the proceedings.
In the UK they criticise the queen, why should we not criticise the president of Malta?
Constructive and civil criticism should be allowed, I saw nothing wrong in what Daphne wrote about the president’s charitable endeavour.
The Sex Pistols are a rock group. People who ridicule the Queen on British TV are called commedians. As far as I know you are neither a commedian nor a rock star.
Your comment on the President cannot be taken as lightly as derogatory remarks by the people you chose to mention as examples of British liberalism and tolerance. Your use of sexual innuendo (blog titled ‘missionary position’) to ridicule the President’s initiative is disasteful and offensive to his office. Therefore, it also offends us, the citizens of this Republic. No wonder there are laws against this.
It would not have not bothered me at all if such a comment came from Alan Montanaro (that would be a laugh) or some other local commedian during a theatrical performance but not from a policial commentator like you using the internet to disseminate information and political opinion.
Fine, now you will respond by saying that you are not a political commentator (but in fact you are) in order to exonerate yourself.
[Daphne – TAL-BIKI. Unbelievable. “Rock groups and ‘commedians’ are allowed by British law to mock the head of state, by journalists are not.” Go back to bed, Farrugia. Now I know why you vote Labour. Perhaps I should be charitable and assume that, in the first place, you weren’t born with much between the ears so you haven’t exactly got much to work with there.]
And are we allowed to mock Rocs Group? Nyark nyark.
Not the ones who died a young, futile death.
What utter tosh, Farrugia.
The sort of person who suffers from a “servility” complex and who places individuals on pedestals where they are to be worshipped, where by inference they are infallible and may not be criticised or questioned.
Yes, the sort of person who blindly follows, the sort of person who does not need to bother with voting every 5 years – if a system existed, they would register their preference at the age of 18 and automatically count their vote at every election, because, well, just because, no discussion needed, and shut the f*** up.
Obviously feel free to pass by, and even “participate”, but this place is populated by people who have a mind to think independently, and openly criticize all and sundry on a no holds barred basis, so don’t imagine that you could ever become part of the mindset – you will always be out of your depth here.
I wonder who else apart from rock groups and comedians (one m) are exempt from mocking the queen or any other head of state for that matter. Is there a list somewhere?
It is NOT a good idea for our head of state to do charitable work abroad. And I would not wish to see President Sarkozy clearing some of our own slums.
Well, there was someone who was not a comedian who mocked the Royal Family. Her name is Lady Diana. Where is she now?
[Daphne – I’d better not get into a fast Mercedes in Paris, then, had I.]
The reason why you criticize the President is because he is not part of the PN Establishment (his roots are Labour). I would be impressed when you start crtisizing the PN Establishment rather than pick on someone who would not respond to your comments. Now thats what I call a servile mentality.
[Daphne – Actually, I believe one of my more famous columns was about the outgoing (PN) president, now deceased, so no further comments.]
Farrugia, you’re late for your flight to Pyongyang. Hurry.
“Your use of sexual innuendo (blog titled ‘missionary position’) to ridicule the President’s initiative is disasteful and offensive to his office. Therefore, it also offends us, the citizens of this Republic”.
I’m a citizen of this Republic, and it doesn’t offend me at all. In fact, I think it was quite clever. Then again, I’m European, which means I have a sense of humour.
To think he obtained a press pass to be able to reply to Alfred Sant’s accusations.
Didn’t that make him a journalist? Where did the respect for colleagues and the upkeep of free speech go?
Don’t go there Jozef….you’ll short circuit Daphne’s brain tissue. She loathes Alfred Sant to high heavens and thus cannot phathom “chi butterebbe dalla torre” (AS or JPO) as the Italians would have it.
[Daphne – Fathom, with an ‘f’. As distinct from, say, ‘phantom’, with a ‘ph’ but with a ‘t’ sound in the middle.]
You insist on not getting it don’t you? Allow me to put it in Italian.
Ma’ tu, ci fai o ci sei?
Thanks for this. Thought it looked phunny.
@ Jozef: “Ci sono, ci sono. Et tu Brutus?”
Et tu Brute.
Have you read this gem? JPO thinks Israel is better suited to join the EU than Turkey is because Israelis are culturally European.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Pullicino-Orlando-Israelis-culturally-European-and-fit-for-membership-20120416
Hear, hear. Freedom of speech is absolute, and that includes speech that we find unseemly and with which we do not agree (see the recent US Supreme Court case Snyder v. Phelps).
I have always found Europeans (particularly Maltese) a bit too libel-happy for their own good. The state should be there to protect people from bodily harm and the molestation of private property, not to keep its citizens feelings from being hurt.
Even in the service of “tolerance,” (Boris’s bus ad ban, the arrest of John Galliano) curtailments on free expression are patently illiberal.
[Daphne – For once, we agree, but it cannot be completely absolute: lying about others is out of the question, and so is the invasion of a private citizen’s privacy.]
Where was Jeffrey back then, when they held juries in parliament – replacing the court of justice?
One wonders, did JPO, take legal advice before asking for police action?
As pointed out in the article above, he is a legislator. He should not be giving directions to the police.
Why does an MP have to come across as a peasant with a pitchfork, and a sense of vindictive justice against the free media?
The argument of so called antiquated laws is very dangerous. In a state based on the rule, all laws must be followed.
[Daphne – You’re quite wrong there. Many laws are allowed to fall into abeyance, and become ‘dead letters’. They are left on the statute books as archaisms but not actually put into practice. I believe we still have a law which says Maltese citizens may be executed for high treason. Would you consider applying that law?]
The police have the right and duty to enforce all laws and not just those laws they think or someone else thinks are not antiquated. If there are antiquated laws, it is Parliament which should amend or repeal them. Until this happens all laws must be observed.
[Daphne – Wrong again. The police have discretion. When they don’t use it, they sometimes cause more trouble and greater injustices than they seek to alleviate. More sophisticated police forces know this. They will, for example, pick up a drunk and either take him home or let him sober up in a station cell, then let him go. The law allows them (ALLOWS THEM, NOT OBLIGES THEM) to charge him for being drunk and disorderly in public and shattering the public peace, but exactly what would be the point?]
Besides similar laws of lese’ majeste’ against defaming and insulting the head of state exist in most states (as criminal libel), including European countries as Italy which has the crime of vilipendio and this law was applied in Spain a few years ago in a case involving a caricature of a member of the Royal family. As far as I recall, Norman Lowell was found guilty of a similar offence of insulting the president.
[Daphne – Was he? I thought his charges were about inciting hatred re racism. Yes, indeed: such laws do exist, but they are, as I explained, dead letters. No British cartoonist is going to be hanged, drawn and quartered any time soon for mocking the head of state, rest assured. As for Spain, pop over to their news sites now and see the flood of criticism that their head of state is under right now. The only countries in which people are punished for insulting the head of state are totalitarian. If a liberal democracy got out on the wrong side of bed and tried to put somebody on trial for insulting the queen, or the president, there would be public outrage, as the public would correctly see it as a threat to fundamental freedoms held dear in the liberal west.]
On the other hand a distinction must be made between criticism of public figures acceptable in democratic countries, and insults or defamation of public as well as private persons. If the latter were acceptable, we then should remove all libel laws.
[Daphne – Libels laws do not deal with criticism, David. They deal with libel (lies and slander, that is).]