Please leave ITALY out of political comparison, a joke of a country where politics are concerned.

The February elections just showed how ungovernable the Italians are.

Nothing works in that damned country – I know, I live there. Try to get something decent working in Italy, ah you’d be so amused.

Another prefect excuse, ministers’ files are personal files. If these files were personal files, why were they hidden? Besides a minister is an official and files kept in the ministry should be public files. A minister should keep personal files at home or at his private office.

[Daphne – Personal files were hidden at the time precisely because there was no rule of law. You never knew what the police were going to take off you. The definition of personal files is not files related to, say, one’s car insurance of health records, but the files related to certain correspondence or dealings. This is perfectly normal. They are either shredded or taken home. And personal emails are systematically deleted, for the obvious reason that you don’t want those coming in after you to have access to them. It is the equivalent of packing your cardboard box and leaving.]

The Cachia Zammit case was decided by jurors, known to be legally untrained and incompetent. In the past jurors have given verdicts which are legal heresy if not also gross miscarriages of justice. A former president and also a former attorney general had stated their scepticisim with the jury system. Besides half the jurors would probably be Nationalist sympathisers and therefore a guilty verdict on a former Nationalist minister would have been highly unlikely. Future trials involving corruption should be tried by competent magistrates and judges and not by jurors, as is the case in the UK with serious fraud cases.

[Daphne – Oh for God’s sake, do stop. What is your beef with that particular case? You are obviously too young to remember it yourself, but seem to have some kind of personal fixation. What is it? You have no idea what it was like living in those times. The police were like the Stasi and life was human rights hell. So please do not speak where you do not know. Whatever your problem is, dump it. You do not know any of the individuals involved, you know nothing about the situation, you do not know the details and believe me when I say that you come across, to those of us who experienced life then, like somebody trying to justify the arrest and persecution of individuals by a totalitarian state, out of some idealistic misjudgement.]

It is incredible to say that all ministers files are personal.

[Daphne – Nobody said that all ministers’ files are personal. There are personal files and there are ministerial business files. The ministerial business files stay on. Obviously. The permanent secretaries, had they not been removed, would have been able to explain this.]

If I wrote to a former minister to complain on matter concerning his remit and I have not received a satisfactory reply, what happens to that correspondence? Is that correspondence in the private files? Do I have to write afresh to the new minister? Do I have to continue corresponding with the old minister?

[Daphne – Unbelievable. The clientelistic attitude taken to extremes. No, you write to the Minister, not to the individual who occupies the role. And you continue to deal with the Minister no matter if the incumbent changes. This is why the government of Malta as the government of Malta has been found repeatedly guilty of human rights abuses despite the government at the time being Nationalist while the abuses were committed by Mintoff’s and KMB’s governments. At law, the government is the government is the government, no matter who forms it.]

Permanent secretaries are a peculiar feature of the UK and Anglo-Saxon countries. In Malta I do not think they have existed for more than 20 years. Other civilised countries have other methods. Say in Italy the incoming minister enters the ministry and meets the outgoing minister. After a brief meeting the outgoing minister leaves the ministry.

[Daphne – Please do not refer to Italy as a civilised country where matters of government and administration are concerned. You cannot, absolutely CANNOT, be serious in offering up the Italian system of government as a suitable or equal alternative to the British system. If you carry on like this, I shall find myself sorely tempted to not even bother answering. There is a reason why the Italian system of the outgoing minister meeting the incoming one for a ‘handover’ is bad. It over-rides and avoids what should be permanent systems and screams out ‘issa nirrangaw’. Hence the permanent secretary.]

Wrong question. The relevant one is: why are you so sure that anything was stolen? Because Leo Brincat said so? Please.

Yep that’s the only way forward. The Times is a disgrace.

So people like equipment are leased. A perfect excuse for the ransacking of offices. Why is equipment leased and not bought by the state, with lease usually being more costly to the tax payer who has thereby to pay more for the offices of ministers and their hangers on? Are all ministry computers, telephones and all other equipment, furniture and stationery all leased?

I know some of the harrowing details of the Cachia Zammit case, including where missing files were hidden, but I think you are similarly aware of them and I do not need to spell them out here.

[Daphne – The only harrowing details, David, are in the treatment of the victims. Nothing to do with files can possibly be ‘harrowing’. And the government lost that case. The files were personal and Mr Cachia Zammit had every right to take them home with him.]

Why is there no handover from the former ministers to the new ministers, the former ministers secretariers to the new ministers secreataries as I believe is the case in other countries?

[Daphne – Again, David, you are seriously misinformed. There is never any handover between the ministers of the outgoing government and those coming in. THIS IS WHAT PERMANENT SECRETARIES ARE FOR AND THE CLUE IS IN THEIR NAME. But the first act of the incoming government was to get rid of the permanent secretaries before they could do this. The result has been chaos, including the chaotic interpretation of the removal of leased equipment as ‘theft’. This has been a parody of an incoming government of Slovakian peasant-farmers, not quite sure what to do or what everything is for, but sure of just one thing: that heads must roll.]

“Saw with my own eyes how unfortunately some people don’t realise that the feast of St. Joseph in Rabat was for everyone to enjoy and it was not part of any political celebrations. Can you imagine ever attacking someone and shouting abuse at them for having different political views to yours ? The hatred in some people is unbelievable. Thank you to the Fransiscan Friars who offered her protection and stood outside the friary like body guards :) Thank you to the very polite police who handled the situation very well. Seems like Malta is not Taghna ilkoll for everyone!”

I stopped buying it ages ago – and don’t rue it at all!

At least I have the satisfaction that some gutter pseudo journalist is not making money through my gullibility.

And please also buy In-Nazzjon and Il-Mument, even though their newsrooms, together with that of NET TV, must enhance their MO and employ better journalists.

In my opinion, they were not effective in denying all the lies meted out by the PL propaganda machine.

However, in all fairness, I must add that this election campaign was so much tarnished with lies and mud-slinging by the PL that it was not an easy task for them to counteract, especially, when almost all the other media in the country were also dishing out and repeating the same lies and presenting them as facts.

The uninformed and the misinformed believe lies more readily than they believe facts.