My response to Jeffrey’s remarks in The Times today

This is the statement I sent to The Times this evening, after reading Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s remarks in a news report today. The links to both reports are below.

I refer to the story running under the headline ‘JPO told Cachia Caruana last week his vote would not be personal’.

I will deal only with the parts which refer expressly to me, by way of legal right of reply. Failure to publish will result in the appropriate action.

The relevant paragraphs are below:

Dr Pullicino Orlando yesterday continued to criticise Mr Cachia Caruana’s “closeness” to columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia.
He said it was unacceptable for high-ranking PN and government officials to “cavort” with her when she “disgustingly” derided Nationalist “icons” like the late President Emeritus Guido de Marco.

“It is precisely because of this situation that I voted like I did yesterday. Otherwise I would have been giving him a stamp of validity to this type of behaviour.”

This is my response.

Though I have known Richard Cachia Caruana most of my adult life, the reality is that over the last four years, since the general election in 2008, we have met in person perhaps 12 times, and all but two of those occasions involved other people, including my husband.

Another two, around April 2009, involved Dr Pullicino Orlando and his consort, Carmen Camilleri Ciantar. This year, I have met Mr Cachia Caruana precisely three times. In the whole of last year, I met him twice, and one of those was while greeting each other as he left and I entered a Christmas drinks party at mutual friends.

I do not think that even Dr Pullicino Orlando would describe this as “cavorting”. I can only think, therefore, that he is not familiar with the facts and has either been falsely informed or has formed an impression based on inadequate observation and on prejudice.

The fact that I am a woman and Richard Cachia Caruana is not appears to have fired up Dr Pullicino Orlando’s imagination. He is fortunate that both he and Saviour Balzan of Malta Today are men, which leaves others less scope to speculate about their relationship.

I criticise all politicians without fear or favour, wherever I deem fit, and this has included the people Dr Pullicino Orlando describes as “icons of the Nationalist Party”. I notice that he failed to mention the prime minister, who I have criticised many times, most notably on divorce and Libya, perhaps because he considers it acceptable for Mr Cachia Caruana to “cavort”, all of three times a year, with somebody who has criticised Lawrence Gonzi.

It is not up to Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando to decide which politicians are allowed to speak to which journalists, and vice versa. Claiming quite disingenuously that his behaviour in parliament last Monday was based on his moral objection to Richard Cachia Caruana talking to journalists, when those journalists are critical of him and his “icons”, makes it clear that he has freedom of speech issues, of which intolerance of criticism is evidence.

He also demonstrates that he does not know his obligations as a member of parliament. Those obligations include the duty to vote on the matter in hand – the contents of the motion – rather than for his own, apparently spurious, reasons. Dr Pullicino Orlando also needs to remember that he remains my representative in parliament, for I was one of those who voted for him. While a constituent can and should criticise the actions of her representative in parliament, because she put him there to do represent her, the roles cannot be reversed. A member of parliament cannot and should not use the platform given to him by his constituents to attack one or more of them.

I am particularly perplexed at Dr Pullicino Orlando’s confused notion that Richard Cachia Caruana deserves the ultimate censure for the reasons he gave to your journalist. He has given different reasons elsewhere, most notably today on Facebook.

Using his own yardstick, how much more severely should he be censured for actually cohabiting with a member of the Labour Party and socialising with others, including the Leader of the Opposition? But then, perhaps he does not “cavort” with them. Also, he belongs, at least nominally, to the liberal party, which would not countenance any such thing.

Daphne Caruana Galizia
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