Former MPs? They’re the Law Commissioner and MCST chairman.
Nicky Azzopardi, the young man who was beaten up in a brawl outside a Rabat bar at 5am last summer, spoke in court the day before yesterday.
He described Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s and Franco Debono’s behaviour that night, and Times of Malta, in reporting on his testimony, described both as “former MPs”.
Why?
It’s their current public positions which are relevant, not their former ones. When they were in that brawl outside a Rabat bar at 5am after a long night out, they were then, as now, the chairman of the Malta Council of Science and Technology and, more crucially, the Law Commissioner.
The mere suggestion of involvement in a brawl outside a bar in the early hours would have been a forced resignation matter for both – certainly for somebody filling the position of Law Commissioner – in any normal democracy.
But here in Malta we prefer to forget that both hold official public positions and even the newspapers continue to describe them as former MPs rather than as the Law Commissioner and MCST chairman.
Try putting those two positions instead of ‘former MPs’ in Times of Malta’s report (link below) and you’ll see just how shocking it sounds.
23 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140224/local/pn-employee-recounts-rabat-assault.508132
That’s what normally happens when young people drink too much.
[Daphne – I trust you said that in a spirit of irony. The MCST chairman is 50 and the Law Commissioner is 40: seriously middle-aged, and both old enough to have grandchildren.]
Their behaviour is like that of those students who were locked up during weekends to study and had to miss Paceville. They want to try and recoup what they lost by staying out all night drinking, pub crawling and hanging around where the real young people are.
[Daphne – Actually, their behaviour is typical of middle-aged men who never knew anything but tar-rahal lives when they were young, with all the restrictions, and for whom the situation was made worse by their poor sartorial presentation and general freakiness. Now, in middle-age, they have suddenly discovered the norms that people like me took for granted aged 19 and got over by 24. In so doing, they labour under the delusion that they are super-hip and cool and do not understand just how very tragic (and anything but super-hip and cool) they look to those of us, their contemporaries, who got Rabat pastizzi shops at 5am after a night at Gianpula out of our systems circa 1985. Franco and Jeffrey are a very sad illustration in a morality tale of how very important it is to be young when you are young. As psychiatrists will tell you, that period is crucial to normal psychological and emotional development. Rebellion that doesn’t happen at the right time, in one’s teens, will happen in middle-age and then the consequences tend to be quite disastrous. The reason why so many Maltese are going haywire in middle-age is because they led very constrained and restricted lives when they were 18 to 24. Most of them never even went to a nightclub. So now they want to go all the time.]
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140222/letters/IIP-questions.507780
Quote
Saturday, February 22, 2014, 00:01 by
Nuri Katz, Moscow, Russia
IIP questions
I understand why Dmitry Kochenov, a consultant to Henley and Partners, would make the comments he did (February 11). I agree there should not be criticism of “countries that offer citizenship for a significant investment in the country in a perfectly transparent way”.
Kochenov, who forgot to be transparent about his association with Henley, and I have made a living from representing investor immigrant clients to governments. When it comes to Malta, the “popular critique” is not of a transparent investment system as the Maltese IIP is the least transparent in the world.
Malta is the first country where the government does not trust itself to manage its own citizenship programme and hired an offshore company from Jersey to do it for them. Why a concessionaire is needed, how he was chosen and what is in his contract are all secrets.
The head of Henley dared tell a former government minister live on radio that the concession was a matter of national security (which shockingly means offshore companies can be privy to matters of national security but parliamentarians cannot).
Why the concessionaire was not fired after embarrassing the Prime Minister and the government so much that the IIP had to be rewritten four times is also a secret. All we know is that the concessionaire will be given control of all money to be paid for citizenship and can do anything with it for up to two years. Will this include paying into slush funds, just as they have been accused of doing by important politicians in other countries? The concessionaire can make up to €200 million, which should be going to the government and the people of Malta.
Unquote
We still do not know the contents of the contract Malta signed with Henley & Partners.
The Scottish bus company McGill’s was not given timely answers to genuine questions by our transport minister.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130416/local/Power-offer-documents-being-kept-under-wraps.465798
The names of the thieves who stole electricity from Enemalta and bribed Enemalta employees will remain unpublished.
Our grinning prime minister speaks about transparent governance but behaves like the Pyong Yang dictator.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/461408/Dictator-Kim-Jong-un-used-to-binge-on-vodka-and-Big-Macs
http://ww1.hdnux.com/photos/26/45/52/5921468/3/628×471.jpg
http://blogs.r.ftdata.co.uk/brusselsblog/files/2013/03/Malta.jpg
OK, let’s settle for a compromise. I think that “former Law Commissioner” and “former Chairman of the MCST” would have been the best way to describe those two “former MPs” because as you say, they should have resigned as soon as they finished eating those Serkin pastizzi.
They’d have to resign first.
Most of us (most probably including the prime minister himself) have already written both of them off, anyway.
By resigning their positions they will be amazing no one but the Labour faithful.
When these two muppets no longer occupy those posts will Times of Malta start referring to them as ‘the former ravers and alleged brawlers’?
It seems to me that the newspaper does not want to stir up any controversy and thus the use of the words ‘former MP’.
However, this is a huge disservice to its readers and to journalism: it should call a spade a spade. These two “former MPs” currently hold positions which are of national interest. Times of Malta should not try to downplay this truth.
In the idiotic Maltese brain, a “deputat” (member of parliament) is above a Law Commissioner or Chairman of the Council for Science-thingumijig and Technology-Schmology (dan x’ikun?), even though the latter has vastly more executive power than an MP, whose only function is to propose and vote on legislation.
So the Times of Malta, which, like its bedfellow Xarabank, has stooped to the yobboids’ level instead of raising them up from theirs, just follows the standard Maltese pecking order:
MP>Chairman>Commissioner
Baxx, I got the book by the way. It is turning into a good read.
Baxxter’s Review of Books is next.
You have made a very valid point that needed to be highlighted. I do not think that Times of Malta meant to downplay the seriousness of the issue, but, unfortunately, they followed the public trend of seeing everything and everybody in political tribal terms.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/A-rebel-moi-Debono-s-dry-reply-to-Fenech-Adami-autobiography-20140222
And what do make of this statement?
[Daphne – It merely confirms the extent of Franco Debono’s delusion.]
Xmun, in my youth they used to say, “wahda tizboq lill-ohra”.
U can expect that a public official will resign on a claim that s/he was involved in a bar brawl as it might have been intentional to tarnish his/her name. So let’s wait for the outcome from the court case.
[Daphne – Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando are not being prosecuted. It is not essential for them to be found guilty of brawling or even to be prosecuted and not found guilty for this to be a resignation matter. It is enough that they were there. And they were. Nobody is denying that. The reason why the Law Commissioner and a state council chairman should not be in pastizzi bars at 5am after a night clubbing is precisely because there is a risk that these things will happen around them or involving them. And in Pullicino Orlando’s case it’s not the first time: he was involved in a drunken punch-up in the VIP seating area at a David Guetta performance a couple of summers ago, and had to be forcibly evicted by bouncers.]
In other democracies, such behaviour would have led to calls for resignation, voluntary resignation or forced resignation.
In such countries, newspapers play a major role. In England MPs have resigned for sending sexist texts or for tweeting comments considered to be racist or sexist.
In the USA, governors were forced to resign for having secret relationships, or for sending the wrong email to the wrong person. Again, exposed by national newspapers.
Imagine what would have happened if these British MPs and US Governors were involved in a brawl at 5am at a bar cum fastfood takeout.
No one would have waited for the outcome of a court judgement. Their resignation, or calls for it, would have been immediate.
Instead, in Malta we have a newspaper which calls them “former MPs” as if they are not responsible anymore since they are not actual MPs and thus it does not see it fit for them to resign from their present positions, which are more important than that of a member of parliament.
Don’t get me started.
We have newspapers which call both Eddie Fenech Adami and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici “former prime ministers”, and make an even-handed judgement on both.
And everyone is giving ever more column space to that has-been Alfred Sant, a full sixteen years after he was consigned to the dustbin of history.
We have newspapers which treat Franco Debono as a completely normal, honest, hardworking, fruit-of-my-endeavours sort of man, and his buddy JPO as some sort of apolitical, peer-reviewed Francis Crick.
Convicted murderer Cikku “il-Misrum” dies, and the newspapers use the sort of vocabulary that would be reserved for the Queen Mother in other quarters.
There’s only one way to reply to Alfred Sant the MEP hopeful:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gpyD6l6AJuc
Ok I see your point and it makes perfect sense, I agree
The words “snout”, “trough”, “possible conflict of interest” spring to mind.
So is this the Law Commissioner getting legally involved in a case of public controversy where the government’s adherance to the law where it relates to acts of corruption is highly questionable?
“Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri appeared for Enemalta.”
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140226/local/tampered-meters-police-have-not-spoken-to-consumers-because-of-political-decision-police-inspector.508418
If this is the Law Commissioner, if I were him I would steer clear of this case.
And if it is him, does this mean that now he is also engaged as a lawyer to Enemalta?
But something which is unbelievable is mark johnson’s comment under the story in The Times of Malta:
Joe Tabone • 2 days ago
Is the Franco Debono referred to in the article DR Franco Debono – the LAW COMMISSIONER?!?
mark johnson Joe Tabone • 2 days ago
So what? At 5am, he’s off duty.