It must be a virus: now Edward Zammit Lewis is lying too
Elena Zammit Lewis nee Farrugia Bagollu, photographed introducing ‘the spouse of the prime minister’ to some of her smart friends, who I have thought best to remove from the picture.
“My other friends are posh people with money, thanks to the relentless networking efforts of my indescribably pushy and savagely aspirational wife, it-tifla ta’ Bagollu.”
During yesterday’s hastily arranged press conference at the Auberge de Castille, featuring Manuel Mallia, Edward Zammit Lewis and Owen Bonnici, Zammit Lewis lied at least twice.
1. He said that there are many European countries which are or will be in direct competition with Malta for the sale of passports (which they persist in calling citizenship because it sounds better).
2. He said that Henley & Partners will receive only €26,000 for each successful applicant (no mention of what they will get for the applicant’s razza u radika), when we now know for a fact that Henley will be getting far more than that at least in terms of fees from applicants.
Have they all been hit by the Liar Virus, or were they liars to begin with?
If I give you my considered opinion, you might say I am prejudiced, but my considered opinion – based on factual observation and deduction – is that you have to be scum to ally yourself with scum in a scum party.
No properly decent person would be able to stand it.
Zammit Lewis’s wife Elena nee Bagollu (oh sorry, Farrugia) isn’t much better, and in her case the problem is worsened by the fact that she is as shallow as a street-puddle and with a mind to match.
Despite her intellectual shortcomings, she has decided to play a significant political networking role that turns out to be all about social contacts which miraculously translate into contRacts or positions on boards for which her husband is responsible.
In return, she and her husband get to socialise with people who would never have given them the time of day had he not first been on the cusp of power and now firmly within it. In sum, it is not only they who are tacky but also the people who make use of them.
Raised as a Laburista by one of Stella Maris parish, Sliema’s quite numerous families of Mintoffians, in a house requisitioned for them by the Mintoff government from a family called Cassar Torreggiani who lived NEXT DOOR TO THEM, she then spent a couple of general elections dancing and singing and waving flags on Nationalist Party trucks when the PN were victors, because that’s what everyone was doing and she wanted to be in with the rest of the crowd.
Then she met Edward Zammit Lewis, and remembered that she was a Laburista after all (her father was one of Joseph Muscat’s first appointees, to some army commission with that cocaine trafficker’s father, Maurice Calleja).
So she tacked herself to Michelle Muscat’s hip, spending the next four years making herself indispensable to the unconnected Muscats-from-the-sticks by pimping for social (read business) contacts for them, but especially for Mrs Muscat, among her so-called ‘tal-pepe’ network of ladies who lunch.
“Maaaaaa, I really don’t mix with hamalli like those, as if, maaaaa” became “Would you like to meet Michelle?” and “Do you know Michelle?”, repeated so often that Mrs Zammit Lewis Farrugia Bagollu probably mouths it in her sleep.
It is only in really unsophisticated societies that trash like this can reinvent itself repeatedly. But then…
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Yes but it worked, didn’t it? It won them the pepe vote. Where was the Nationalist pepe network? Nowhere.
[Daphne – The tal-pepe network was busy securing its own survival, H. P., which is why this strategy would not have worked for the PN and would not have worked for Labour at any other point in history – just as it will not work for Labour again in 2018. Already, eight months in, Labour is deeply unfashionable and embarrassing. ‘Who, me? As if! I didn’t vote for them. Maaaa, come on.’]
It would take more than a comment here to address the question, but I can’t help noticing how the pepe-PN relation has changed over my lifetime.
When I was growing up, to us working class people it looked like the pepe classes were PN’s natural home, its support base, and its value base. Of course you pepe knew it wasn’t that simple, and you knew that there was a sizeable number of pepe Mintoffians and Laburisti.
But as with any marketing campaign, it’s the perception among the majority that counts. Since the majority were working class, the paradigm held. And since the aspirations of a social class are invariably to rise and not to sink, it followed that to move upwards, you embraced PN values.
This is no longer the case, and the connection might even have been reversed. The instant identification pepe=PN no longer holds. So something has gone spectacularly wrong in the Nationalist Party.
It’s not, as the post-mortem reports would have it, a deficiency in communicating with the lower classes, but a total disconnection from the upper classes.
At the same time, you had the tragic development over the last two decades of a sort of fast track to success, Gulf oligarchy style, made of easy money, easy business and connections rather than education. To an extent, it was fostered by the Nationalist Party’s emphasis on wealth as the yardstick by which everything is measured.
A case in point is the divorce referendum. There the PN had to fight the campaign on other stuff, such as values and social morals. By then, the Maltese population had become so alienated from these high-falutin’ concepts that the message was completely ignored.
This passport story is so absolutely vital (it may well be the turning point, a sort of St Nazaire Raid) because it pits money versus Some Higher Ethical Code. So in a sense it is the first opportunity in decades for the PN to fight a campaign on Right Wing values (call them Christian Democrat if you will). Which it hasn’t done since 1987.
And it is these intangibles which resonate with the pepe.
If you think that Labour are losing their appeal and their support and will lose a 2018 election, you are being as stupid and blind as the ones who voted them into power.
Seen on another t-shirt for sale on the Monti:
I MET MRS MICHELLE MUSCAT
IN THE PRESENCE OF IT-TIFLA TA’BAGOLLU
Could it be that the €26,000 is the payment Henley will receive from the Government over and above the client fees?
[Daphne – YES, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, YES. One is a FEE (paid by the buyer to the broker, Henley). The other is a COMMISSION (paid by the seller to the broker).]
The way the whole thing is structured, especially with Henley offering a fast-track processing of application against a 50% surcharge on the standard €70,000 fee, it should be Henley who should pay a commission to government, not the other way round.
What due diligence can anyone do when the applicant comes from a war-torn country, where government departments have been ransacked and burned down?
I worked with Serbs and Croats who fought in the Balkan War against each other. When you start a conversation about their war experiences you can see that they’re not telling the whole truth and that they’re trying to change the subject.
How can one know if these guys looted homes, raped women or participated in some massacre?
We all remember how Karmenu Vella ran to visit his brother and Libyan ex-oil minister.
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/04/a-textbook-lesson-in-how-to-screw-things-up-when-a-simple-press-statement-would-have-saved-the-day/
If the militias take over and there’s anarchy in Libya, wouldn’t Malta be a convenient stepping-stone for Europe and a safe haven for Gaddafi’s ex-collaborators?
“Show us the money and we’ll fix you everything”.
This ex-oil minister could afford to pay for a boat trip to Malta for himself and his family and a long stay at a five star hotel.
He would have afforded to pay a million euros to obtain an EU passport for himself and his family.
This guy has a briefcase full of dollars, platinum card and a Swiss bank account, unlike the other boat people coming from Libya. We’ll find a decent place for him and his family and hand him an EU passport, because he’s filthy rich, largely on ill-gotten gains.
Actually, the fact that a person from such a country has the better part of a EUR 1 million to pay for a passport should in itself be a red flag indicating that in depth investigation in his/her background is required.
Intellectual ability isn’t necessary in that sort of network.
No, it’s a bit of a hindrance in fact.
Almost a full biography… It would we be wonderful to hear your own life story. That of a well educated Christian democrat.
[Daphne – You won’t hear my life story, because in my milieu, boasting is beyond the pale. And I am not a Christian Democrat, nor was I ever one.]
X’ghandu x’jaqsam?
[Daphne – Oh, don’t bother, Catherine. He sounds just like one of Mrs Zammit Lewis’s immediate family members. Maybe they don’t want all their new friends to know that they had Mintoff requisition a house for them in a smart Sliema street from a family called Cassar Torreggiani, and then insisted on getting paid to let go of it, which is how they bought their house in Swieqi or wherever. Crooks.]
Totally unrelated, but why do these women all dress so naff?
Honestly, enough already.
That shiny material that EVERYONE seems to wear in different colours, the tight tube dresses, tacky little clutch bags, statement watches, over styled hair. Please. You can take them out the village…
Typical.
Mhux ta’ b’xejn ic-ciera fuq wicchom. Donnhom jisthajjlu li se jittehdilhom xi haga.
Of course yes – a full biography. They like it anyway so you do not really need to defend them.
If you’re out and about sticking up plaques reading ‘in the presence of Mrs …, the spouse of’, having MEP candidates author books about your husband simply to claim that they are loyal, and all that – they surely love being given biographies.
Or perhaps they would rather prefer an autobiography? Where they shape themselves as they deem fit? Such as the photoshop-manipulated image of Michelle-the-model on some cover magazine some months ago, rather than those warm fat-loving hips and that sweet pregnant-like bump of a tummy as shown in the picture above.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/gossip-is-a-form-of-murder-pope-francis-reflects/
[Daphne – Yes, when you’re dealing with lies and slander, as I know better than most, having been subjected to it relentlessly thanks to your lovely political party. But here we are talking facts. Mrs Zammit Lewis should be informed that this sort of thing goes with the territory. She was quite happy to dish it out in Opposition, now she has to learn how to take it in government.]
Joh, the Pope wasn’t talking about facts but about lies and slander. Mrs Zammit Lewis is a very public figure. She is not exactly the private, stay-at-home wife of a cabinet minister, but a prime mover and networker for the Labour Party and government.
It is not gossip John C but facts.
Mintoff stole so much from the Cassar Torregianis. National Bank anyone?
I wonder if he had a particular bone to pick – maybe a Ms Cassar Torregiani scorned his advances or very simply he just hated those who he considered socially superior to him.
Just between us, I’ve only met Mrs ZL once, Mr ZL once too. We’re of no relation that I know of. And I was brought up as blue as can be! My family and I are Sliema/St. Julians as blue as the Smurfs… I’m very neutral, I’ve only voted in one General Election in my life and I voted in a very ‘rainbow’ fashion, voting for the individuals and their character. I have no party preference.
[Daphne – You must be on drugs.]
Hope you’re enjoying the colourful government, rainbow voters.
Stick to City.
I urge those who are desperately sad about what is happening to Malta to keep a form of diary with the lies happening and how they feel about it as it happens. A log. Just a few lines a day.
Events like these change people who are sensitive enough to reject the lack of values.
Five years of this is going to be a very long time. One needs to remain attached to one’s sanity. One needs to remember the time when Malta’s desperate mob was not roaming the corridors of power.
The lies take hold and those involved cannot but support the structure with more lies.
They know that once they fail to support it, they’re relegated out of any focal position they may today hold. There are always others waiting to back stab and take over anyway. The type of rat race now in place means that not one of them is safe in the knowledge that their position is secure.
They know, because it’s what they did on the way there, that the rule is anything goes: the craftier, the better.
This is how this type of scam is structured.
Would love to have a peek at the diary you kept of the last 23 years .
Mmm… why? What’s important is one’s own. Ultimately we are all responsible for our own choices. Life happens now. What we are is a sum of our choices.
The thinking for those choices is built on the interdependent pillars of health and values. When one suffers, they all do.
Why are you surprised Daphne? Isn’t it obvious that we now have Government By Lying, given that we first had Opposition by Lying? It is the order of the day. Right from the very top all through the ranks and this was happening even before the election.
Mrs Zammit Lewis’s family are definitely crooks. If you can move into a house that was taken from your neighbours to give to you (remember the Cassar Torreggianis were persecuted in Mintoff’s days) then get paid to let go of it, that makes you a collaborator in the theft of other people’s property.
This is so typically Labour. Elena Farrugia has found her match in Michelle Muscat – do us all a favour and hang around with her.
There were street patrols in those glorious days, party faithful given the task of spotting houses which could be requisitioned.
They’d walk around streets jotting addresses and the surname of families to accommodate. Some owners refused to give in, literally smashing roofs to render the property inhabitable. I believe the one opposite Capua Palace is such a case.
Others weren’t so lucky.
Unless the right to property is repristined in this country, Labour will always remain a contender.
It will bring about a natural order, one that corresponds to people and their potential.
Anything else is blind speculation on human capabilities.
Ostracisation would work wonders in this case.
Not even the persons who are proposng the law agree with its interpretation.
Question: What is the common factor between Mrs Zammit Lewis and Toni Abela?
Answer: They were both raised as Laburisti in a house (flat) requisitioned for them by the Mintoff government.
Lovely pic.
The Spouse with the Countess of Castiglione-Bagollu.