Double standards: the chairman of the Anti Cyber Harassment Alliance finally speaks about Cyrus Engerer
After ignoring the phone calls of journalists all weekend, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando – who set up the Anti-Cyber Harassment Alliance with Labour MP Deborah Schembri last summer after photographs of him in compromising circumstances in Rabat at 5am were published on this website – has commented on Facebook about Malta’s most prominent cyber-harassment case.
He’s joining the Labour Party (obviously) in making Engerer the victim of persecution.
Now pause for a minute to imagine what Pullicino Orlando would have done if anyone had emailed to his political colleagues of whatever party a series of photographs showing him engaged in sexual contortions (don’t try to imagine this bit) anonymously.
All hell would have broken loose and the country’s agenda would have been hijacked for the next two years at least.
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What the heck is it with these people and ‘mistakes’? It was literally just a couple of years ago, and if it were a mistake Engerer would not have committed it repeatedly and with the malice and cold planning he did.
Who is this clown trying to fool?
The hypocrisy and shallowness of these people leaves me gutted.
Someone should set up an Anti JPO-Debono Harassment Alliance. We’re sick of being harassed by them.
We keep hearing how dearly Engerer has paid for his mistake, as though he’d shoplifted a lollipop from the store down the road, and not committed a malicious, vindictive and cruel crime perpetrated on his ex lover and repeated over several days, designed to cause maximum damage.
And how has he paid for this mistake exactly? By withdrawing his candidature to represent us in Europe? Was there any other option?
He has shown NO remorse for his crime or made any public apology for his behaviour.
It’s all been about him and how much he’s been made to suffer.
I would like to tell JPO that this is not a matter of being ‘destroyed and ostracised’ because it’s Cyrus Engerer’s fault full-stop and yes he has paid ‘dearly’ for it.
I think we’re all forgetting the fact that if the common layman out there commits an offence, he/she might lose his/her job instantly besides having one’s reputation tarnished for the rest of his/her life. So yes I expect the same from Cyrus Engerer-either to resign from all his public posts or get fired.
JPO, like many other Labour apologists, practices Orwellian ‘doublethink’ perfectly.
He sets up an Anti-Cyber Harrassment Alliance one day, and the next thing you know he is making apologies for a convicted perpetrator.
Imagine if he’d been sentenced to any actual jail time, which would have been deserved in my view. This was not a “furia di sangue” moment; it was calculated and repeated over an extended period.
I wish everyone would stop with all this “paying dearly for his mistake by withdrawing his candidature…”!
Chapter 467 of the Laws of Malta (EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT ELECTIONS ACT) clearly states at Article 19:
“no person shall be qualified to stand for election as a member of the European Parliament or, if elected, to remain a member thereof if, whether in Malta or in any other Member State –
(e) he is serving a sentence of imprisonment (by whatever name called) exceeding twelve months imposed on him by a court in a Member State or is under such a sentence of imprisonment the execution of which has been suspended;”
So, like it or not, he would not have been eligible to stand…
Ah, but the law was amended this March to allow people with suspended sentences to stand for election.
Cyrus Engerer would have therefore still been eligible.
Indeed, this is why Norman Lowell is being allowed to contest.
Yes, banana republic indeed.
Only prisoners in jail should be allowed to stand.
We could even suspect premeditation in this change of law in case all Cyrus got was a slap on the wrist.
In my mind the government knew that Cyrus would be sentenced because I cannot believe that the AG did not inform someone of the gravity of the charge.
They hoped for a more lenient sentence whereby with this change in the law Cyrus would be able to worm his way through – but Cyrus is a bigger worm, much bigger.
Although it is a purely hypothetical and totally impossible case, I would still like to ask Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando a question.
Jeff, what would you say and do if you discovered that obscene pictures involving you were sent to Joseph Muscat, the Science Council, your family etc, and investigations proved beyond doubt that these were sent by, for argument’s sake, a member of the Nationalist Party?
One thing I am doubly sure you would NOT say would be that it was a mistake. What you would do is unimaginable.
I rest my case.
He makes me sick. His leader makes me sick. In fact everything they all do makes me sick and we have at least another four years of it.
There may not be any physical violence but this is mental violence at its worst.
‘He has paid dearly for a mistake he made a number of years ago by withdrawing his candidature.’
So Joseph Cuschieri was right after all.
‘Les jeux sont faits’ – Cyrus had been guaranteed a place on the winning team and Cuschieri found about it.
Either that or Cyrus has not paid dearly at all. He only lost the candidature not the post.
‘Those who want him see him totally destroyed and ostracised’
According to Cyrus’s C.V. he didn’t manage to hold a job for more than a couple of years since 2002 (that’s another year Chris Engerer was arrested, this time for cannabis possession).