He’s such a good man – he goes to mass
This morning, David Thake tried to ring the Police Minister’s communications officer, Ramona Attard, live on air. She didn’t pick up. Maybe she was topping herself?
So then he tried Manuel Mallia’s mobile phone. Codruta picked up. “He is at mass,” she told Thake, who then asked her at what time the Police Minister was expected back and in control of his phone. “I don’t know, because I am at home with the children,” she said, as though this is in any way relevant.
While the situations burns and everybody is talking about it in anger, the Police Minister spends last night in the front row at a song contest, and this morning at mass, sucking up to God and the parishioners. What a flailing hypocrite, in the worst Paterno tradition.
Meanwhile, both the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition take a break from reality for a spot of surrealism, behaving as though nothing is happening on the President’s charity run.
Then tomorrow it’s back to warring tweets, I imagine.
Try to understand this, both of you: if something is serious, it is serious. You don’t break off for a spot of jollity in the middle of serious issues just because it’s for charity. By doing so, you convey the message ‘not that serious, after all’, and because it is in direct conflict with what people are actually thinking, you both come across as vapid.
If Muscat wished to be vapid and try to distract attention from his massive problems by waddling for charity, then so be it. The Opposition leader should have left him and the President to it and stuck to his guns about the seriousness of the situation we’re in.
If this carries on, I won’t blame outsiders living in Malta and looking on for thinking that this is a flea circus full of loony-tunes.
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One wonders whether he confessed his Mass-ive lies whilst he went to hear Mass.
Well, the Mafia bosses were known for their devotion to religion as well. They were good benefactors and had/have little shrines inside their houses.
Maybe it is a way of redeeming themselves (at least to themselves).
Mallia must be thinking that his best bet is divine intervention.
Or he knows about the peculiar trait of many Maltese who think that anyone who goes to church must be on the straight and narrow.
Min informazzjoni li għandi mistagħġbin kemm għajtu n-nies meta spiċċat il-fun run. spiċċa għamel din il-fun run partiġġjana wkoll.
Mhux għalhekk ried imur!
U l-ieħor tgħidlix li tela’ jitqarben ukoll wara l-gideb li qal sakemm ma kellux il-ħin biex imur iqerr! X’għarukaża ta’ nies!
Eżempji mill-isbaħ qed jagħtu wkoll.Kuxjenza safja jaħasra.
Excellent comic relief. Can’t help cackling.
The image of Joseph Muscat ‘waddling for charity’ is a classic. Is there a video?
All those rotten IRA mass murderers went to mass too.
Shouldn’t Mallia have been at the President’s Fun Run at that time?
I do not agree that Simon Busuttil should have kept away from today’s charity fun run.
It was just a break from the disastrous situation we are experiencing of late and tomorrow will be good enough to resume lambasting Joseph and Manuel.
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but I don’t agree with you at all. I’m just trying to picture the Opposition leader and his MPs taking a break from events in November 1986 and going on a charity fun run, then resuming battle the next day. It just doesn’t cut it. If something is truly serious, you don’t take a break from it. If you can take a break from it, then it’s not serious. People are all fired up with annoyance and anger and then they switch on the news and see Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil on a stage together all happy and smiley and clappy. I think we need to get real here.]
Daphne, the thing is neither Busuttil nor any of his colleagues are convinced that things are as bad as 1986. The rest of us out here think otherwise. You can feel it. There is fear.
Bombs are going off and bullets are flying. To us poor humble citizens without the privilege of a seat in Parliament, it’s 1986 all right.
To us, this isn’t about who wins the election.
I have the sensation that we are slowly but surely getting closer to the 1986 situation but charity should not suffer the consequences for Muscat’s gross incompetence in this Manuel barbuljata.
Having said that, perhaps participating in the fun run and then withdrawing from the scene at the finishing line would have been a better outcome.
[Daphne – It wasn’t a barbuljata. It was a shooting on a residential street, even a murder attempt. My course of action would have been to give a cheque to charity and not go. Charity benefits through money, and not through the public spectacle of people running around for show. That may sound harsh, but it’s reality. And what of the fact that Muscat donated 10,000 euros of public money that was not his own, with everyone clapping like idiots, when he could well afford to donate that much and more of his own funds? Charity with other people’s money isn’t charity at all. I am very uncomfortable with these situations: you can’t run with the president, all nice and jolly, and then the following day demand to know, in parliament, why she is driven about by a prison guard carrying an automatic weapon that he might well not be licensed to carry. This is the Maltese ‘many hats’ syndrome and the inability to understand that individuals are not fragmented into their many different roles in many different situations, but they are an integral whole in a continuum of reality.]
Perhaps you’re right but I still feel that Simon Busuttil should not have just sent a donation and kept away. Let’s agree to disagree.
[Daphne – No, I will not agree to disagree. Some things in life are opinions, but other things are facts. The fact in this case is that if a person feels strongly about something then all of his actions and words have to dovetail with that, because if they do not, then he conveys the message that he doesn’t feel strongly about it at all.
I will not go for a fun run and bounce around on stage with somebody of whom I strongly disapprove and who is currently engaged in something which I find appalling. The mystery, to me, is why something that is so patently obvious is considered a proper oddity in Malta – and no, I don’t put it down to the small size of the place and the fact that we all have to survive by breathing down each other’s necks. It goes beyond that.
I think it’s a deep-rooted belief that nothing is really that bad, and that we might even be capable of doing such things ourselves, and so we tolerate as we would wish to be tolerated should we or our drivers ever decide to let loose a round of bullets into somebody’s car. If Adolf Hitler had survived and escaped jail and come to Malta, he would be a normal guest at parties and fun-running for charity. Mhux bniedem bhal l-ohrajn? And you never know, he might be useful.
‘Kull min jerfa idu ghandu xi jxomm.’ That’s the standard response to legitimate criticism of the behaviour of politicians and their hangers-on. What you have right there is a statement of belief that everybody is capable of shooting others or trafficking cocaine or exploiting labourers or slurping up millions through corruption and crony deals. And you know what – I’m beginning to think that this is actually true and that is why people in Malta are pathologically incapable of taking serious matters seriously.]
You are right, of course, and Simon Busuttil in his heart of hearts knows it as well.
It’s the political fall-out he and the party is worried about. It always upset me to see politicians going for each other’s throat one minute and sharing a drink at the bar the next.
Daphne, you are so right in this. I bet you Joseph Muscat and Michelle Muscat did not even buy the official T shirt as they were not wearing it at least during the bit I saw on mum’s TV.
I thought Beppe Fenech Adami’s courage to be in that crowd was beyond belief. I would have been terrified of getting hurt.
@ PWG
There wouldn’t be fall out had he abstained in this context.
There would be increased respect for action aligned with events and convictions.
The issue has been resolved, as you can see from this Fun Run picture of Muscat and Busuttil shaking hands: http://wms.di-ve.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_player_slider_image/public/article/media/Fun%20Run%2013.jpg
(Only this badly cropped version exists so far, but I’m sure a proper picture will soon surface.)
I agree, Daphne. Tomorrow it will be all about the budget in Parliament when Simon Busuttil should really put it aside as Eddie Fenech Adami had done and just speak about the shooting incident.
Let me be clear about something. I reiterate that Simon Busuttil shouldn’t have stayed away from the fun run because of the horrible incident that took place last Wednesday, but if, as you are saying, there was this bouncing around on stage, then you are absolutely right.
It went that much too far. I would have snubbed Muscat and returned home as soon as I crossed the finish line.
That is exactly how it should be.
A national crisis of this magnitude supercedes any budgetary consideration.
It is incumbent on the leader of the Opposition to make this point in the House.
He should insist that, in the national interest, he will speak about a blatant breakdown in law and order currently affecting the country.
He should point out that that the head of government appears to be incapable of reining in the miscreants and of controlling the home affairs minister and the police. and that therefore he should resign.
It’s worse than that, actually.
The prime minister and leader of the Opposition were sitting literally shoulder-to-shoulder at St John’s Co-cathedral this evening for a mass celebrated by the archbishop.
I presume that Manuel Mallia was there too.
Daphne have you noticed that the Muscat family was wearing matching North Face outfits again?
I totally agree with you that this is a very serious issue, however the show must go on. At the rate things are happening, we might have something worse which will make us forget this saga.
There is a famous episode during WW1 where soldiers stopped shooting at each other during Christmas eve and Christmas day, shared cigarettes and played football together and then continued killing each other the next day.
Daphne, keep up the good work.
[Daphne – I thought somebody would inevitably bring up the 1914 Christmas truce, given that it is currently in the news because of a highly controversial Sainsbury’s advertisement in Britain. And my response is: please don’t be ridiculous. The comparison is deeply offensive and inappropriate.
It could have escaped your notice, because it was not in the controversial supermarket advertisement, that there was but the one Christmas truce, in the first year of the war when people did not yet realise how bad it would get and actually thought that it would all be over by Christmas. There were none thereafter, when reality hit home.
‘The show must go on’ is a maxim from the theatre. What we are dealing with here is real life, not a show. Unfortunately, too many people lack a sense of occasion or of what is appropriate, which is why the church parvis after funerals turns into a cocktail party without drinks.
It was not appropriate for the Opposition leader to go on the fun run, and it was not appropriate for the prime minister either. Both of them belittled the current situation by being inappropriately jolly (and worse, inappropriately jolly inappropriately in tandem). This is to the prime minister’s advantage, which is why he did it. It dovetails with the message he is trying to convey that the situation is NOT serious. And that, too, is why Manuel Mallia made sure of being prominent in the front row at the song contest last night, instead of burying himself at home covered in sackcloth and ashes.]
Daphne, you are perfectly right.
Unfortunately most Maltese people are in denial.
They just cannot see the writing on the wall.
They never dreamt that the eighties would be back with a vengeance just eighteen months after another MLP victory at the polls.
You can hardly blame them.
What is happening is just unbelievable.
The rule of law and the democratic game are departing our shores after almost thirty years of normality and prosperity.
You and I and many others expected this to happen after a few years but the vast majority of Maltese people still cannot believe it. The fact that it happened so soon after the election took many by surprise, I must admit.
It will take some more time to sink in.
But it will and how.
Quando non posso piu, ritorno al buon Gesu’
All fascists and mafiosi are active in the Catholic Church. I get my knowledge from ‘The Godfather.’
Mallia at mass? That’s news. X’ipokriziha
You are so right, Daphne. It always makes me mad, especially at Christmas time when Parliament breaks for holidays and all MPs get together for drinks.
First they are at each other’s throats on serious issues, get people’s adrenalin up and then act as if all is fine in the state of Denmark.
Políticos have to learn that this is not on. They bewilder people.
There are principles and values in life to be upheld. One cannot put these aside for a minute or so of ‘fun’ for a charitable cause. Or even at Christmas, for drinks.