Get your facts right, Malta Today

Robert Musumeci comes up from behind (as Saviour Balzan has just discovered)

All fired up to grind its myriad axes, Malta Today doesn’t let the facts stand in the way.

Last Sunday, it ran a story suggesting that the reason Magistrate Herrera is no longer hearing two unrelated libel suits in which I am involved is because I petitioned the chief justice to remove her.

Wrong.

When the original fuss broke out way back on 30 January, I wrote on this blog that I would petition the chief justice to have Magistrate Herrera removed from those two cases, as there was no way I was going to get a fair hearing.

As it turned out, she anticipated events by voluntarily abstaining from both cases when she returned from her inkjesta/holiday/whatever in Singapore a couple of days later.

And so there was no need to petition the chief justice.

Let’s put it this way: she would have had some brass neck not to abstain and to wait until she was removed. I’ll give her the brass neck, but she’s hardly silly enough to stay on.

Malta Today went to the retired chief justice, Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici, for a quote – in the same spirit that Super One rings Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando for a soundbite. The retired chief justice said that no such petitions are permissible, and implied – no doubt because he was misquoted – that untoward measures have been taken.

Malta Today’s story was picked up by Super One and Maltastar. The three of them have taken to working (unwittingly, perhaps) in tandem.

Now the actual chief justice has issued a statement to set the record straight.

timesofmalta.com, today:

Chief Justice denies receiving Caruana Galizia petition for removal of Magistrate from libel cases

The Office of the Chief Justice has denied receiving any petition from columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia to have Magistrate Consuelo Scerri-Herrera removed from two libel cases.

“No such meeting was held either on the morning in question of on any other day, between Magistrate Scerri-Herrera and the Chief Justice in connection with these cases; nor was the matter of her abstention ever discussed with her either verbally or in any correspondence,” the Office said.

I believe Malta Today is now also having trouble with Robert Musumeci. They ran that big front-pager Sunday before last, about how he was asked to meet the prime minister, who told him not to stand in the casual election.

Given that Malta Today has been grinding Musumeci’s axe so hard that I can see the sparks fly from where I’m sitting, the general consensus was that the information came from Musumeci himself.

Who else could it have been? Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando? Consuelo Herrera?

Anyway, it now turns out that Musumeci – Robert, that is, not Joseph – is posting comments on his Facebook page (where else….) praising the prime minister, saying it isn’t true the prime minister ticked him off, and more or less selling Malta Today down the river as liars – after they backed him up.

Saviour Balzan, in Malta Today this morning (they have a Wednesday edition, hadn’t you noticed?) was very cross about this. He wrote:

“Robert Musumeci has NOW said that he was not asked by the Prime Minister not to stand for the by-election…and that the fact that the PM said he was concerned about the lurid and unfounded and vile allegations about his partner Consuelo Scerri Herrera on a wayward blog was meant as a ‘threat’.

Well, let me quote verbatim from what was said in Malta Today: ‘Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi himself was the person who last Tuesday personally told the PN’s Siggiewi mayor Robert Musumeci that the allegations made about his partner Consuelo Scerri Herrera, the magistrate, by Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia had rendered him unsuitable to stand for a casual election.’ Now that piece of information was not dreamt about or forced on Malta Today. It was transmitted to this newspaper. It was not spin but unadulterated reportage.

Two weeks later, and Musumeci is writing on his Facebook wall about what a genuine man Lawrence Gonzi is, and more so he is saying in the press that his conversation with the PM could be open to interpretation. I am not quite sure what to write here, so the reason that there is a pause is because I am banging my forehead on my desk.

Well, I guess it has a lot to do with how he has interpreted MEPA rules, I guess.”

I imagine Saviour Balzan has now understood the general gist of my message about the risks inherent in having faith in a determined cheat.

Let’s put it this way: Robert Musumeci double-dealt his wife and the mother of his child. He’s hardly going to think twice about double-dealing Saviour Balzan who, one would hope, meant far less to him.

Another point: why bother with magistrates at all, when Saviour Balzan has decided already that what I wrote about Consuelo Herrera are ‘lurid and unfounded and vile allegations’?

Quite frankly, he’s not exactly in a position to know, having met her only recently.

So what’s going to happen to Malta Today’s MEPA Watch column? Maybe Astrid Vella will begin writing it instead.