Jason Micallef lies to the public and defies Joseph Muscat (again)

For the last week or so it has been something of an open secret, among those involved in politics and the media, that Joseph Muscat has asked Lou Bondi to sit on the Valletta 2018 board/committee and that Bondi might well have accepted. That this was going to be a major problem with Valletta 2018 chairman Jason Micallef could have been envisaged. Micallef hates Bondi’s guts and was even caught on camera, during a Labour Party event in the 2008 general election, mouthing the words “kemm hu p**ta Lou Bondi” to the man sitting beside him.

Now, in the context of Jose Herrera having made Micallef chairman apparently in defiance of Muscat and without his prior consent, and in the context too of Micallef’s contempt for Bondi, Muscat’s invitation to Bondi to sit on the board/committee chaired by Micallef looks very much like the prime minister’s own bitchy act of tit-for-tat malicious defiance.

But what’s worse is that Jason Micallef has now given an interview on video (see below) in which he is asked at least twice whether Lou Bondi has been approached to be on the board/committee and whether he will form part of Valletta 2018, and he categorically denies both.

He is in a position to deny that Bondi will be working with him on Valletta 2018, because he can refuse to have him. But categorically denying that Bondi has been approached to be part of it is a blatant lie to the public, and what’s more, a lie made on the record, on video, in an interview.

It is also a lie that compromises the prime minister, who did indeed make that invitation to Bondi. So one can only assume that it was done deliberately, and that Micallef is so confident in lying about the prime minister’s actions and in defying Muscat because he really must have something on him.

Let’s face it. This is but the latest in a series of acts of defiance which would have had any other man steamrolled by the party leader. Jason Micallef is not Franco Debono or Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, using a one-seat majority in parliament to defy the party leader horribly.

He must be getting his leverage elsewhere. There is no other explanation.

That Jason Micallef has lied to the public in this interview does not surprise me one bit. This man lied under oath in court, committing blatant perjury when he said that he had no idea who I was, no idea that I write a newspaper column and a blog, and that he thought I wrote cookery books. It might have been a good joke over dinner, but on oath in court it becomes the crime of perjury.

I think a lie of this nature is a resignation matter. But more specifically, if the bitchiness between the prime minister and Jason Micallef is getting in the way of things, then questions have to be asked. If Micallef is indeed using some kind of leverage to consistently defy the prime minister, then the prime minister is compromised, and we are ill-served.

In sum, this is the bitchy-girls-in-the-playground situation we seem to have here:

Jose Herrera appoints Jason Micallef as Valletta 2018 chairman to spite Joseph Muscat because Muscat didn’t make him a minister;

Joseph Muscat retaliates by inflicting on Micallef the very person – Lou Bondi – on whom he has waged a years-long public war of contempt, hatred and resentment;

Jason Micallef responds in kind by refusing to have Bondi, and by giving an interview to publicly deny that Bondi was ever even asked – in other words, “I’m the boss here and nobody is going to tell me what to do or who to work with”.

Now it’s a matter of seeing how Joseph Muscat is going to bitch him back. This is what our government has come down to.

L-intervista tal-ġimgħa maċ-Chairman tal-Fondazzjoni Valletta 2018, Jason Micallef from NewsBook.com.mt on Vimeo.