Don Manuel is toast
Then Nationalist Party’s newsroom has managed to get hold of transcripts of the telephone calls Manuel Mallia’s driver made to the police the night he shot Stephen Smith.
What can I say? Don Manuel and the prime minister’s chief of communications, Kurt Farrugia, are toast. Now we know why Farrugia was sitting next to Mallia at the morning-after press conference.
Don Manuel isn’t just toast as a cabinet minister and politician, he’s also toast as a parent, and Appogg should be looking into the matter.
Between 9pm and 11pm they’re all in a panic – Police Commissioner Ray Zammit, Police Minister Manuel Mallia and the prime minister’s communications chief Kurt Farrugia – trying to work out what to do and what to say in the press release. Issuing that press release with ‘warning shots’ is now clearly the priority.
At 11pm Manuel Mallia suddenly remembers his daughter is at the driver’s mother’s house. He doesn’t even know what the address is, where his daughter is being kept in the care of strangers. He speaks to the driver and asks him where his mother lives, only to be told that Pawlu L-Machine Gun, the other driver, has collected her already.
There is not the slightest sign of concern about his daughter’s well-being, or the kick-in panic that normal parents feel when their child is out there in a potentially dangerous situation, and at night too. He does not even show any anger towards his driver for being so reckless when looking after his daughter (forget shooting another man). Instead he says to him, when told that Pawlu L-Machine Gun has taken her home, “OK siehbi.”
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http://maltarightnow.com/news/2014/12/05/dawn-it-telefonati-jikkonfermaw-il-gidba-ta-mallia-2/
Have the full transcripts been published yet?
I bet my bottom dollar he will manage to wriggle out of this and still cling on to his seat…
I suspect you are correct. Muscat does have a history of defending people convicted and suspected of crime or wrongdoing.
No need to bet – it is a cert.
The Prime Minister, the Police Minister, the Deputy Commissioner and Kurt Farrugia are all responsible in one way or another in this mess and should go hand in hand to Castille and offer their resignations.
[Daphne – The prime minister tenders his resignation to the head of state, not to himself.]
If the Prime Minister had to resign, would that mean that the government falls and an election has to be held ?
Or would the deputy PM be acting Prime Minister (god forbid) until cabinet approves a new PM ?
Mallia should not kicked out of Cabinet. He should be shifted to Minister of Culture.
The are refurbishing the Fine Arts Museum and they need a lot of frames.
Minister of Gun Culture – Mafia taghna lkoll
Where are the election buzz words for Mallia? Professjonalita’, esperjenza, integrita’……. So much for the switchers especially those who knew him and still voted for him.
The minister is defending himself, and any man who defends himself has a fool for a client.
Is Malta being led by a cabinet or a cabal?
I hope the minister remembers that we have the Whistleblowers Act and protect the source rather than start a witch hunt to determine who leaked the transcript.
The PN scrap heap has integrated with Labour, seamlessly. The ethnic cleansing exercise has to be pursued relentlessly and prospective candidates should be vetted carefully to weed out any prospective Franco DeBonos, JPOs etc.
In the meantime, inkomplu nhaffru:
Morality laws need reassessment – Owen Bonnici (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141206/local/morality-laws-need-reassessment-owen-bonnici.547056).
If we reassess based on his moral compass, it’s going to be interesting.
In all normal democracies, the government would resign and fresh elections would be called. But of course this is Malta under Labour….a police state.
That “OK siehbi” is the killer.
It looks like that Joseph Muscat and company thought they could carry on from where they left off in May 1987 (or September 1998 to be pedantic) but did not factor in that people are not afraid of MLP any more, And now there is Internet, smartphones, blogs – where would we be without them.
The fear is still there.
These people don’t operate at night these days but in broad daylight, where it hurts.
(I’m not quoting what Norman Vella said.)
Where the only thing that’s seen is that hand as it disappears beneath the quicksand.
Remember, usually it’s the force of a whole organisation descending on one target at a time.
Where some get slapped with a Libel suit.
And others….
Different strategy according to crime and potential.
Manuel Mallia will be forever immortalized with the words, “OK siehbi”.
In my previous communication I had told you that Sheehan was on something stronger than Red Bull.
Id-Devil used to team up with the late Marisa Bartolo (il-45) and they used to prowl about in, if I remember correctly, a red Ford Escort Mk I on what were ‘private initiative’ drug raids, seizing cash and ‘merchandise’ and tipping about pending raids in exchange for a pecuniary consideration.
Their ‘victims’ would be grateful that they had only lost their cash and/or stock and not their liberty, so ne’er a report was filed. How else did he get to buy that property?
Din gravi hafna. Din tissejjah Mafia. Jiena nibqa nsostni, kif dejjem emmint sa mill-bidu tat-twelid tal-Moviment Laburista, li min dahal f’dan il-grupp, dahal bl-iskop li jerdgha.
Il-PN ma kienx partit perfett, kellu diversi nuqqasijiet, pero dan il-hmieg qatt ma wettqu u dejjem iggieled kontrih.
Manwel Mallia missu jirrezenja u mieghu iwarrab ukoll il-Prim Ministru.
Il-poplu Malti ma jixraqlux li jkollu nies bhal dawn imexxuh.
Dawn iridu min isejjhilhom Onorevoli?
Araw ftit min inghaqad maghhom, JPO – lupu liebes ta’ haruf, Franco Debono – jekk ma nilghabx inhassar, Jesmond Mugliett – ma jixraqlux l-icken kumment, Cyrus Engerer – kriminal b’sentenza ta’ habs sospiza, John Dalli – ragel bravu u intelligenti hafna, li izda hammar wicc Malta fi Brussel minhabba skandlu ta’ miljuni kbar ta’ Ewro, ecc ecc.
Dan huwa l-lejber party. Hmieg, hmieg u hmieg!
Oh kemm kont mohhok maghluq ja poplu, tajt is-sahha tat-tmexxija lil min dejjem cahhadna mill-liberta’, tahthom dejjem bil-liberta’ mhedda.
No we are.
The question now is: on 20 November, when Joseph Muscat said that he was angry and disgusted after his meeting with the interior minister, was he already informed about all the facts of the incident the previous night – facts that his spokesman and interior minister had known all along?
Are there no phone calls with the Prime Minister? Is it possible that there were no exchanges, particularly in that hour of ‘silence’ until the official statement was released?
[Daphne – These transcripts were taken from police logs. Calls to police lines are the common factor in all of them.]
What a mess! Is this the way accountability and transparent government works? Scandalous and disloyal to the democratic foundations of our country.
I am sorry to say but I lost all trust in this Government and its governance practices. This is extremely bad for our country, and even worse, is the dishonest practices applied by the Police in handling this case. Where is the Prime Minister? Can we as public ever believe the Government statements? What a shame that we are treated worse than the dust in the air.
There is something totally surreal in this whole story.
If I had entrusted my young daughter to my driver who asks his mother to baby-sit her, and then I receive an agitated call that my driver has been involved in a gun shooting incident in front of his mother’s house, I would be strongly demanding of my driver the whereabouts of my daughter, and the rest is detail.
So either Mallia is a horrendous father or he is so entrapped in lies that he has lost all logic. Keep on digging, Daphne, the truth will out.
There’s a shooting, a car accident, a large police back up racing to the scene, his daughter somewhere in the middle of all this. We all knew that Mallia and his driver cum babysitter were discussing what happened first hand and before anybody else.
“Sparajt fuqu” is not “sparajt fl-arja”.
As I said before, it is a minister who has no integrity who refuses to resign. The one with integrity resigns to save his prime minister’s reputation. In this case, the supreme factor is a prime minister who fails to remove his dead weight minister. Why?
Short of the resignation of all culpable Ministers to-date, this Prime Minister’s reputation can no longer be saved.
Nor can that of this legislature.
You say he’s toast because you’re a normal, decent citizen and human being. But to the Other Malta, about 95% of it, heqq, m’ghamel xej’ hazin.
Manuel Mallia will never resign.
Oh and while we’re at it, the Opposition is once again showing its poor grasp of language, which is to politics what bricks and mortar are to houses. They can can bleat “Manuel Mallia ghandu jirrizenja” until the cows come home. But they’re using the third person, which makes it all impersonal, because, you know, blame the sinner not the sin.
It should be directed to Manuel Mallia himself, in the second person. I know it can’t be done in parliament, because MPs address the Speaker and all that, but in speeches, it can be done.
Compare and contrast:
“Mr Gorbachev should tear down this wall”.
“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall” was the climax to a longer speech that addressed Mr Gorbachev directly.
That was in 1987. The wall stood for another two years.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GCO9BYCGNeY
I know that. So you don’t agree that the second person singular works better than the the third person?
What has happened to the separation of powers?
The Police Commissioner is toast as well. He should hand in his resignation immediately for being in cahoots with a government minister and the prime minister’s head of communication.
I think it should be, in particular for “he’s from Barcelona” -toasted bun.
They will get away with it because the people who voted for them think that this is no big deal.
Siehbi Manuel dabbar rasek, ja giddieb.
Gzira is Mallia’s home town. Was his daughter being taken back from somewhere by Sheehan?
Was the girl taken to Sheehan’s mother temporarily because of the shooting?
Kurt Farrugia cannot be toast as he was not the source of the misinformation. He comes out as the unknowing messenger.
Oh no he doesn’t.
Nispera mhux xi perception ohra
Any government MP with honour would vote in favour of the motion against Mallia.