The New Year’s Eve murders: what on earth was The Sunday Times thinking? And the Police Commissioner is off his rocker.
Try as I might, I just cannot understand why The Sunday Times chose to run that story today, why it chose to run it at all. Is it, perhaps, to make the Police Commissioner look more of an incompetent nutter than he did before?
All that crazy talk about ‘dark psychological spaces’ and morbid speculation which he has no business doing even in private let alone in public in a widely-read newspaper interview. His business is in dealing with the facts, not in speculating on them.
This from somebody who refuses to answer question about something which he has a democratic duty to answer questions about: the John Dalli case and accusations of political interference.
“Leaving cases like this one open isn’t healthy,” Zammit told The Sunday Times. That’s because people want answers, he said – not the families of those involved, you understand, but people in general. In other words, seksiekin and gossips. What’s wrong with this man? The business of the police is to solve cases in the interest of justice, law and order, not to satisfy the morbid curiosity of a bunch of strangers.
I was horrified at what he said in his interview with The Sunday Times, horrified that the newspaper sought to open the month of Christmas with a sally calculated to cause maximum, terrible pain to many people. And this when it isn’t at all topical, making its publication even more cold and spiteful.
The police commissioner is beyond being unfit for purpose. It’s not as though he knows what his role is and is incapable of filling it. He doesn’t even know what his role is.
All that speculation was revolting. Worse than the speculation was the way Peter Paul Zammit laid down certain things as fact, when there is no way he can know them as fact.
The families of both murder victims are still alive and living in this gossipy hellhole of an island and this is the last thing they need. Some people went out of their way two years ago to try to stop others making public lurid assumptions either one way or the other, about one man or the other. I was one of them. What I read back then made me literally sick. And now here we are, with the Police Commissioner of all people leading the charge for vicious gossip.
Compare his stupid, stupid behavior with that of his predecessor, who at the time refused to impart anything but the barest facts and actually told people to stop speculating because nothing good could come of it.
Two years ago, the situation was utterly horrid: internet comments boards open to all of this country’s nastiest people, saying the most awful, awful things. Worse than the nasty ones taking pleasure in hitting people when they were down were those far too stupid and shallow to understand that they were talking about real people, not characters in a play.
Some of the things I read on Malta Today’s comments board were so vile, so indecent, that I actually rang the website developer, Claudine Cassar, to take a look at them and speak to Saviour Balzan about the wisdom of allowing such miserable vileness to be published on his website. Libel and slander don’t even begin to cover the sheer cruelty of it – they got away with those comments because people pole-axed by a situation like that are in no position to sue or to ask for police action, and in any case, two of them were dead already.
And today it has all begun again on Times of Malta: more stupid, stupid people discussing this terrible case and those involved as though they are fictional characters. What bad taste. What sheer lack of human decency, of basic civilized humanity. Stop it, all of you – you are beyond disgusting. These are not public figures. These are private citizens, and their murder has not made them public or given you licence to pry into their lives or discuss their characters on the internet.
It is not necessary to have the comments board open under every story. Indeed, it is common practice to disallow comments under stories such as that one, in communities where severe distress is caused by murders, especially when nobody knows what happened.
This is an appeal to those who are in charge at Times of Malta: for pity’s sake, have some decency. Delete those ghastly comments and disable the comments function for that story. That stream of slander and libel about murder victims does you no favours. It is gross.
It’s bad enough that you ran it. Tell your readers that if they want to speculate about who stabbed who and why, who did what to who and for what reason, about blood and guts and fingerprints, they can ruddy well go and do it in some bar where nobody else can hear them.
What a sick society: running for charity in the morning and tearing murder victims to shreds in the afternoon, in full view of their families. Somebody commented on this website recently that the defining characteristic of your average Maltese person is a complete lack of empathy, a cynical coldness and indifference marked by a propensity to treat the suffering of others as a sort of sideshow. I could not agree more.
Maltese people are cold – loud, aggressive, passionate about their own interests, but cold as ice towards the plight of others unless it is in the abstract, like running for ‘charity’. This is a perfect example of that coldness.
Please know that I will immediately delete any comments that seek to discuss either the details of the case or the individuals involved.
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Peter Paul Zammit should stick to catering. It’s the one area where making barbuljati is professionally acceptable.
Dear La Redoute, I do not agree with you at all. I work in the catering business and trust me, if one of my supervisors was such an incompetent he would get the boot immediately.
No offence intended. The comment was ironic. You must have read it literally.
l-gharef jahseb li hu xi kummissarju tal-affari tieghu imma meta jiftah halqu biex johrog ic-cucati.
He’s really in the habit of issuing dogmatic statements isn’t he? Like when he said there’s no case against Dalli.
Meanwhile, we’re still awaiting for the guy who killed the flamingo in Salina to be arraigned.
The commissioner’s personal convictions appear to be getting in the way of the investigation of the crime.
The only positive aspect of this interview is that it exposes the commissioner’s inadequacy for the role he occupies. In that, it is redundant since knew of the commissioner’s inadequacy already. The interview should never have been given, much less published.
What’s telling is how candidly he’ll put forward goobledygook and pseudo analysis. Very typically Maltese, basta nbossu.
As for Times of Malta, plainly intended to reverse the drop in readership. I strongly recommend free DVDs. They’re pitiful.
Apart from the flamingo case, there are two other pending cases. The brawl at tal-pastizzi tas-serkin and the MTV concert ‘you know who I am’ episode.
[Daphne – The brawl has gone to court already.]
Times of Malta has lost any sense of decency. This is nothing new. When humans seeking a better life crossed over and many of them drowned, Times of Malta permitted shocking, disgusting, vile, racist comments under that story.
Does anyone, actually, read those comments for moderation before they are allowed to appear on the comments-board? I don’t think so.
I sometimes wonder whether there actually is a moderator on the comments board of timesofmalta.com.
Comments are uploaded wholesale and it is clear that the moderator – if there is one – is an out of depth part-timer. Furthermore Times of Malta does not even abide by its own rules of engagement, sketchy as they are.
Some time ago, that newspaper had triumphantly announced that it had engaged a superannuated tabloid hack from the UK as consultant to improve content and circulation; as he has failed on both counts, has he been shuttled back to Blighty?
So last week we were told that the John Dalli Report will be handed over to committee and that the police will be called in for investigation if deemed necessary.
Meanwhile, shouldn’t the police be investigating the author of the Report about his trips to the Bahamas – and Africa if any – while he was EU Commissioner for Health? This is where PP Zammit should be spending his time, not speculating about murder victims.
It seems Ariadne Massa has got swept by The Times mediocrity. Once she ran an article about some shady dealings of an ex employee of mine, and implied the involvement of my company, when in fact he was no longer in my employ.
If the courts were not so pathetically slow, I would have sued her pants off. But why bother.
However I no longer advertise in The Times, and have cancelled my subscription.
And mine was not the only instance. Another infamous case was a contractor allegedly involved in a corruption scandal with Transport Malta, and they featured a truck of the wrong company.
The Times’s remedy? A tiny errata ccrrige.
Ariadne Massa is a friend and fan of Luciano Busuttil. That says it all.
Quoting Daphne, “The police commissioner is beyond being unfit for purpose. It’s not as though he knows what his role is and is incapable of filling it. He doesn’t even know what his role is.”
Defined In Maltese terms: Libes zarbun jigieh kbir; zatat; lanqas jaf x’laqtu.
Libsuh qalziet u hara fieh.
The bit I found most disturbing was where he speculates about what he possibly went through in Bosnia. What a muppet.
[Daphne – Yes, he has no right to do that, especially since Nicky Gera’s mother and two brothers, who are also from Bosnia, are listening. Ta’ wara l-muntanji – I just find this kind of thing unbearable. He’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, which is exactly why he was given the job, but even so, some basic decency, please.]
There’s a sister too.
I say shame on that newspaper for giving the Police Commissioner such prominence on such a sensitive matter without any consideration to the families involved, and even splashing this on the front page when it isn’t even news.
This commissioner of police should be totally ignored. He has nothing new to say.
I too felt absolutely digusted this morning when I read the story and the comments which followed.
Shame on them all.
Dan Kummissarju tal- buzulotti u tal-pjaciri ghall- gvern prezenti. Pulcinell ta’ Manuel Mallia. Kull ma’ ghamel s’issa hu li rega ingagga l-pulizija li kienu telqu u dahhal fil korp anke nies li ma kienux dekor li jaghmlu parti mill-korp tal-Pulizija.
The Times reported the case as it has not been solved. It also reported this case a year ago. Who best than the Police Commissioner to give the known facts on the case? There will always be speculation on unsolved atrocious crimes but the past and future police investigations can shed some light on this macabre case and put gossip. The police have the duty to continue to investiagate such horrible crimes and the police have also the duty to keep the public informed. Such crimes are public knowledge and the public should be informed of any progess made in this and similar cases. Other cases were reported in last week’s Xarabank of which however I only saw a small part.
[Daphne – ‘Who best than the Police Commissioner to give known facts on the case?’ If they are known, he doesn’t need to tell us. Secondly, no – he’s definitely not the best person, as the John Dalli case showed. And thirdly, this is not a public interest issue. The only interested parties are the families concerned. The police commissioner certainly has no business speculating about the childhood history or mental state of anyone involved, like a gossip in a bar. His behaviour is uncalled for and just plain disgusting. Policemen deal in facts, not ‘dark psychological spaces’ of their imagination. No, the police do not have the duty to keep the public informed. This is a private matter. We need to be certain that justice is done, but we certainly do not need speculating police commissioners and sordid views. Xarabank is not something you should be quoting as a standard of correct behaviour.]
Daphne , unfortunately Xarabank has become the standard of behaviour.
The problem is that the Police Commissioner is of Xarabank standard.
@David – why do we, as a public, have a right to be informed about the personal details of private persons who have been murdered? Will it change your mood? Will it satisfy your curiosity? Does it fall within the ‘public interest’ remit?
I really cannot understand the morbid fascination about other people’s misfortunes. I feel sorry for both victims’ families who have to live with people whose only interest is nosing in other peoples’ lives. Live and let live.
Good reply to this idiot.
The Times must be scraping through the bottom of the barrel to attempt to increase its readership.
When police detectives investigate a homicide the first thing they need are the hard facts; speculations and hunches do not close a murder case. Secondly, besides the interest of justice they have to try and bring some kind of closure to the victim’s family.
Our intelligent police commissioner did it the other way round, he opened another feeding frenzy to the hungry public, caused another stir of speculation and does not even think that these victims have families whose feelings should be taken into consideration.
May I tell the police commissioner that solving a murder is not in the interest of Joe Public, but in the interest of seeing justice done.
“Leaving cases like this one open isn’t healthy,” Zammit told The Sunday Times. “That’s because people want answers, he said” – This statement reveals clearly that our Police Commissioner’s thinking is primarily political.
I get the feeling that the overwhelming majority of the vile and lurid comments passed on this case seem to stem from envious pleasure because it involves two families of the sort that inspire bitterness and jealousy: one with plenty of new money and entirely self-made, and the other a family of Sliema puliti.
I can’t quite find a word for what I mean in English and in Maltese “ghira” doesn’t quite capture it. I believe it’s called “lanzit” a sort of “hu ga fik” sensation.
[Daphne – British English uses the German word ‘Schadenfreude’ (shah-den-froi-de), which means a pleasure in the misfortune of others who we envy.]
Re my earlier comment maybe bitterness comes a bit close to describing it?
[Daphne – I’ve just given you the word you’re looking for.]