“DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” I didn’t think people actually say that in real life. My God, how crass.
The Police, Army and Broadcasting Minister’s chief of staff, the lighting-equipment-supply businessman Silvio Scerri (seen here beneath the yellow arrow) is reported by The Sunday Times this morning to have entered into an alercation with gatekeepers to the restricted area for VIPs, at the Isle of MTV concert.
This happened when they refused to allow his lady friend in, because she didn’t have the required clearance. And we all know what happens when a self-important man with a fragile ego, who wishes to impress his lady friend with his great importance, is brushed off instead.
Franco Debono had gone nuts in roughly similar circumstances at the Isle of MTV concert a couple of years back.
Determined to show his lady (a woman who is not his wife; men rarely feel the need to impress those) how powerful he is, he turned to a police officer standing nearby and said of the gatekeeper, “Arrest him because he says I’m talking nonsense.”
The Police Commissioner told The Sunday Times: “I’ve ordered the case to be investigated irrespective of who Silvio Scerri or John Muscat are at this stage. There was a dispute and I want to know exactly what happened.”
John Muscat is the security man who was at the gate.
The Police Commissioner misses the point. It is precisely because of who Silvio Scerri is – chief of staff to the Police Minister – that he should (and did, though for different reasons) give an order himself for investigation. The Police Minister’s chief of staff has no business going about town asking police officers to arrest people. That is why he should be investigated.
The Police Commissioner is doing it not because of this, but because Silvio Scerri is his mate, chief of staff to Manuel Mallia, who bent over backwards to make him Police Commissioner (makes you wonder what Peter Paul Zammit the CID officer might have done for Manuel Mallia the criminal defence lawyer, though of course I am not suggesting anything untoward here).
I’m sure none of us is going to believe for one minute that the Police Commissioner himself takes a personal interest in fights that break out between the people who want to get into a VIP area and the other people who say they can’t.
The Sunday Times reports that witnesses – in the plural – who spoke to the newspaper said that Silvio Scerri shouted out “Don’t you know who I am?” (“Int ma tafx min jien?”).
How vulgar.
But of course, just what you would expect.
One hundred days and one week of ‘power’ and it’s gone to their head. Imagine what things are going to be like by the time these five years are up.
So arrogant.
And then, in typical Labour fashion, the person who is wronged for doing the right thing and standing up for his rights ends up investigated by the police himself instead.
The Police Commissioner questioned whether Muscat was the one who had the say-so over whether people could enter the restricted area, and told The Sunday Times: “I have to see the contract he was assigned.”
WHAT?
So now, keeping people out of a VIP area is suddenly a matter for the police?
The Police Commissioner also said that Silvio Scerri never “ordered” the police to arrest Muscat because “the police don’t take orders from civilians”.
What do they call this – Jesuitical argumentation?
The fact is that Silvio Scerri demanded Muscat’s arrest. That the police ignored him because they don’t take orders from civilians is an entirely separate matter.
And it turns out that the police did not ignore Scerri at all. They didn’t arrest Muscat – they had no grounds – but to quote the Police Commissioner, “Muscat was asked to step aside and informed he was practically breaking the law by employing people as security officers without the necessary permits”.
PRACTICALLY breaking the law, eh? You either break the law or you don’t. You don’t practically break it. And employing people as security officers without permits IS breaking the law, not practically breaking it.
But the point is, how did the police know, in the heat of the moment when they asked Muscat to step aside, what his employees’ permit situation was?
That’s right, they didn’t.
John Muscat has told The Sunday Times that his employees’ permits are all in order, and that this is a lie. In fact, The Sunday Times itself saw something fishy in it, because its journalists asked why Muscat’s employment credentials had suddenly become an issue for police, when the dispute concerned the unaccredited entry to the restricted VIP area of a woman accompanying Silvio Scerri.
The Police Commissioner’s reply is quite incredible. “It became an issue when a security officer – who is also a soldier – provided back-up for John Muscat and found himself in a quandary who to answer to: whether to his permanent employer, Silvio Scerri as chief of staff at the Home Affairs Ministry, or his temporary employer. That’s when it became an issue.”
I shall have to use capital letters here, I’m afraid. THE CHIEF OF STAFF AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY MINISTRY, AND WHAT’S MORE A BUSINESSMAN WHO IS A POLITICAL APPOINTEE, CAN IN NO WAY BE DESCRIBED AS A SOLDIER’S ‘PERMANENT EMPLOYER’. IT IS SHOCKING THAT THE POLICE COMMISSIONER, OF ALL PEOPLE, DESCRIBES HIM AS SUCH. THE MINISTER’S POLITICAL CHIEF OF STAFF IS NOT THE ARMY’S COMMANDING OFFICER. NOR WERE THE CIRCUMSTANCES THE SORT IN WHICH EVEN A COMMANDING OFFICER COULD GIVE A SOLDIER ORDERS, BECAUSE THE ORDER ITSELF – ‘I WANT TO GET INTO THE VIP AREA WHERE I HAVE NO PERMISSION TO BE, SO LET ME IN’ WAS NOT LEGITIMATE.
I am going to use capital letters again: THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO ARE ANSWERABLE TO SILVIO SCERRI, CHIEF OF STAFF TO MANUEL MALLIA, ARE THE MEMBERS OF MALLIA’S PRIVATE SECRETARIAT. ANYONE ELSE IS FULLY ENTITLED TO TELL HIM TO GO SCREW HIMSELF.
Something else: Peter Paul Zammit the Police Commissioner seems to be about as sharp and bright as Manuel Mallia the Police Minister, which means not at all. He tells us that the police don’t take orders from civilians (the Police and Army Minister’s chief of staff), but then in the same breath says that a soldier had a conflict of interest because he should have taken orders from his “permanent employer” (the Police and Army Minister’s chief of staff).
So if the police don’t take orders from civilians, is the Police Commissioner suggesting that soldiers should? Somebody who lectured him for a while at the university told me that he doesn’t exactly have the kind of brain for which you’d need to book extra luggage space. No kidding. But then, Manuel Mallia doesn’t either. His distinguishing characteristic, other than his stinginess and his ugliness, is his stupidity.
Manuel Mallia is Joseph Muscat’s worst mistake, and Peter Paul Zammit is Manuel Mallia’s. Between them, these two are going to turn the situation into a frightening mess, a cross between the Stasi, the police in a Mafia village, and the Keystone Cops.
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Also, a severe case of arrested (how adequate that word is here) development. I’m 30 and I feel too old for Isle of MTV. I find I need more refined entertainment these days.
Dear Daphne, I hope you will excuse me for using a vulgar expression in Maltese, but I just have to say it: fil-veru sens tal-kelma, libsu qalziet u hraw fih.
Vera li l-poter tela’ ghal rashom.
That expression keeps coming to mind too often nowadays.
Hu go fik, ja poplu Malti. F`mitt jum ga gejna qisna l-Kampucja.
On a separate note, what happened to Manuel Mallia’s attempt at having Paul Borg Olivier jailed?
He is still preparing his cell and of course now also a sous chef and a waiter to serve him.
It’s the 70s and 80s – the Golden Years all over again, except that this time they will try to make their excesses legal because they have more lawyers in their fold.
The frame up of Pietru Pawl Busuttil, among others, comes to mind.
I wonder what would have happened had a security officer tried to stop Princess Etoile and Princess Soleil from entering the VIP area, as children were banned from attending the festival.
[Daphne – Children were allowed in this year, to avoid having to make a special exception for them. In the event, I don’t think the parents even turned up.]
If children were allowed it must have been a last minute decision, because I know of people who wanted to go to the VIP area but couldn’t because of their children.
I think that we’ll probably be kissing goodbye to the Isle of MTV.
The organisers must be thinking that we’re more trouble than we’re worth.
The PM wants to bring his children, so change the rules. Te Minister’s Head of Secretariat wants his arm candy to enter the VIP area, so arrest those in charge of security.
They’re dragging us down to banana republic status with the PM as our tinpot dictator and Manuel Mallia as his self-important sidekick.
This Labour government is amateurish to the point of being dangerous.
Could it be said that Manuel Mallia PRACTICALLY broke the law when he paid for waitering services [obviously non-taxable] from non-registered food handlers?
Hardly any doubt about it.
Why are these maniacs so hellbent on partying with people who could be/are their children?
FFS, Isle of MTV has contributed to middle-aged pri*ks (and there’s my answer) (i) bringing down a government and (ii) engaging in obscene abuses of power.
I wonder what young Europeans will think about Malta when they see those middle aged men in their menopause on their screens while they watch the Isle of MTV concert.
The soldier’s quandary was that if he did his job of keeping an unauthorized person out of the VIP area, he would be victimized in his regular job.
It just occurred to me that these people don’t realise that when they talk to the media, they are actually talking to the voters, the taxpayers, the public.
It hasn’t occurred to you that they don’t think they’re accountable to anyone.
And they do not realise that there are intelligent voters, taxpayers and public.
Shouldn’t they just shut up and focus on doing their job properly?
Are you sure there are intelligent voters,… because I am not that sure anymore.
Kienu jgħidu li n-Nazzjonalisti saru arroganti, mela dawn x’inhuma wara biss kważi erba’ xhur!
It’s blatant at this point, the police force is there to satisfy the ministry’s whims.
The Commissioner’s statements have simply defined Labour’s underlying axiom; the state can discern between itself and its citizens. Arbitrary decisions according to ‘circumstances’.
Power created out of a vacuum and personalised.
Nauseatingly familiar. The younger ones will see it develop, fast.
Remember Austin’s FW? Look where we are now, three ruddy months and the police force’s been liquidated.
After all, if Kurt Farrugia keeps dishing the ‘Dan gvern pozittiv u l-poplu warrab il-messagg tal-PN’, this mindset will follow.
I wonder how long before PN voters will be defined ‘in need of conversion’.
I’m sick.
‘Practically’ breaking the law. One breaks the law or one does not.
This is reminiscent of sħubija ‘sħiħa’ ta’ Malta fl-Unjoni Ewropea. One becomes a member of the EU or one does not.
Meta sejjer jitghallem dan il-qwazi gvern?
Reality is setting in, and people have begun to understand what they were fooled into voting for.
Now we have the likes of Manuel Mallia, Silvio Scerri and Peter Paul Zammit. Calling them amateurs and incompetents is putting it very mildly.
These three stooges are very dangerous people and their deeds and actions over the past few weeks are testimony to this.
The way they impart orders over the phone to subordinates is simply atrocious.
God only knows what they will be ordering the police to do next.
I do not know why, but Tal-Barrani comes to mind.
What about planting a murder weapon in the farm of an innocent Pietru Pawl Busuttil in an attempt to frame him with a murder he did not commit? It seems we are on the way to a political police that received its training in that kind of stable.
I was curious enough to go to the Isle of MTV this year and accompanied my twenty-year-old daughter with two of her friends to watch it.
It was an outright disgrace. The surrounding bars in the Floriana area were selling vodka by the bottle and the result was acute drunkenness which led to sporadic brawls all over the place with people throwing up and a show of cheap tattoos from young men and women alike.
The police allowed these bars and clubs to just hand out vodka the way they did – the official stalls around the venue were all decent enough selling snacks, refreshments and beer.
You see, that’s why children should never have been allowed anywhere near there.
What a fool Joseph Muscat is. He needs to be setting positive examples, not negative ones. Children should not be allowed at events where alcohol is served or where alcohol is expected to be present.
This besides the fact that they should be in bed at that time.
http://zekzik.com/2013/06/30/silvio-scerri-jordna-li-jaghti-l-ordnijiet-lill-pulizija/
It’s what the people wanted and that’s what they got.
It’s what some people wanted and what we all got.
Issa jekk ghada pitghada tkun ser xi hadd jithajjer jaghmel konferenza internazzjonali f’Malta u jisma b’dawn il-praspar ma tahsbux li dan jahsiba darbtejn jekk jghamilhiex jew le minhabba is-sigurta?
Can the Police Commissioner explain what he means by “irrespective of who Silvio Scerri and John Muscat are at this stage”. What happens when “irrespective” becomes “respective”?
I don’t know why anyone is surprised. This is totally in character for Labour.
Anyone taking bets that the Commissioner of Police was not asked by Silvio Scerri “Do you know who I am?” and that he would not have been influenced by the implied threat?
I remember vividly the rapid succession of five Commissioners of Police in Mintoff’s time before the crown (of thorns) was passed to a more durable C of P who (in)famously ended his police career as a convict in the Corradino Correctional Facility.