Retired judges Magri, Sciberras and Camilleri should preserve their dignity and relinquish the inquiry
Published:
December 6, 2014 at 2:41pm
And this not because of anything they have done – far from it – but because of what has been done to them. The prime minister has made a mockery of them and has sought to use them, their good name and above all, the high office they held before retirement for iniquitous purposes.
As the Opposition leader said this afternoon while answering journalists’ questions, the prime minister “appointed three retired judges to see if there was a cover-up when he knew already – as these telephone transcripts show – that there was a cover-up. This is a useless inquiry because we now know the answer already.”
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Explains the loaded question by Mr. iNews.
It is checkmate for the four of them, for the Prime Minister ,for the Police Minister, for the Police Commissioner and for Kurt Farrugia. No need of inquiry.
Joseph Muscat is only Prime Minister in name. This incident has shown without a doubt that he is still “Prattikament Prim Ministru” after all this time.
I think that after the enquiry and the decisions which the Prime Minister might take, eventually he will emerge as a hero.
And his popularity might increase. Who knows? I wonder how Dr. Mallia will take it if he is made to resign. Earnestly waiting. Never a dull moment here in Malta.
I think that after the enquiry and the decisions which the Prime Minister might take, eventually he will emerge as a hero. And his popularity might increase. Who knows? I wonder how Dr. Mallia will take it if he is made to resign. Earnestly waiting. Never a dull moment here in Malta.
Simon Busuttil kien ghaqli meta ma riedx ikollu x’ jaqsam mal-investigazzjoni mill-imhallfin. ‘This is your mess, so deal with it,’ qalilhom.
Issa jigi Evarist bil-vergni.
Joseph Muscat must be hoping that the three esteemed retired judges act the part of the surgeon in the Evarist Bartolo scenario.
And wise in hindsight as well as prior to things happening. Must be in direct bearing with his values.
Here’s one person who doesn’t need a vox pop as a value gps.
I hope that switchers out there are starting to realise what a huge difference in substance exists between Joseph Muscat and Simon Busuttil.
Muscat was blown completely out of proportion to his real-size self in the electoral run-up. This suited him fine because as an only child he had been showered with attention by their parents and like most only children he expected and still expects to be universally admired.
A contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler believed children who lack siblings have traditionally been expected to display stilted social skills feeling competent and secure within themselves yet seeing others as optional, rather than essential.
Simon Busuttil is not an only child. He is a no-nonsense person, shrewd and ready to appreciate the efforts of those who surround him. I know this through the experience of having worked close to him on more than one occasion.
For the sake of Malta’s future it is imperative that this shameless government is replaced as soon as possible for the situation is seriously out of hand and it is impossible to say what may happen when a celf-centered person who never had to fight for his parents’ focus might do once he feels that he is losing his grip on attention and power.
Stop calling them switchers. They didn’t switch. They screwed up the country.
Muscat screws up the moment the agenda isn’t set by him.
He had it easy when Lawrence Gonzi was under constant friendly fire, easy with most newspapers vying for interviews and novelty value. And even then, it took him until the last month of the legislature to push the no-confidence motion and bring government down.
It’s why he’s into electoral campaigns, one can take that anywhere. No different to setting market trends, his book nothing but textbook creation of needs made wants.
Basically all he’s done to date, is perpetuate his indispensability. What has to be realised, and this by Labour itself, is that there should be a future after Muscat.
His mistake was thinking he can keep the rise of Busuttil at bay, and how, pray, does he expect to do that, when it isn’t even two years?
Remember his answer to priorities, win the election, think government later. Short term time marketing if ever it could be defined. Especially when the ‘costed roadmap’, remember that, flounders every week.
There is such a thing as a product led market, it counterbalances every intensive campaign to values, vision and whatnot. He can’t. Neither can Konrad, who thinks engineering can be set up on paper in a couple of schedules.
And this in a closed system, all things ideal. Yeah right.
With that unexpected plebiscite he was in trouble, it demanded he could basically take all the hard decisions, battle the indolence and carry out his Malta li ried jghix fiha.
He failed miserably.
Regarding switchers, so they voted him in, surely not one of them expected this. Shootings are not permits. Nor did those of genuine socialist conviction.
Ares, the vast majority of those people you term as having screwed the country were seduced by Joseph Muscat after having had enough of the Gonzi government.
Those are the people whose rightful place lies within a much better political party than the MLP will ever be.
They are the ones who will make a difference come the next general election because they won’t be voting Labour again.
I’m not talking of the Lou Bondis, the Cyrus Engerers, the Jesmond Muglietts, the Franco Debonos or the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlandos of this island. I am speaking about the thousands who saw a better Malta, rather than more money for themselves personally, in Joseph Muscat.
They were thinking in national terms rather than personal gains, in the main.
These are the people who were taken in by sweet talk, who failed to gauge the consequences properly, who were not capable of seeing through rhetoric and theatrical make-up.
These are the people who had originally shifted to the PN because of serious incidents in the MLP ‘Golden Years’. These are people who voted Nationalist, perhaps for the first time, when the Blue Sisters were kicked out, when the university students were beaten, when Maltese doctors had to leave Malta, when a band of criminals ruled the country – I could go on forever.
‘Screwed the country’, you say. I disagree. They ‘unscrew it’ perhaps, they made a bad choice and most of them can see that today. Everyone is liable to making mistakes.
Let’s welcome them back, because it is only they who can ‘screw the country’ back into place now.
My conclusion is that the journalists had the telephone transcripts from the day after the whole thing happened.
Simon Busuttil is giving Joseph Muscat’s band of liars enough rope to hang themselves.
By his action Prime Minister Joseph Muscat mocks the learned judges himself and yet has the cheek to accuse Opposition of making ‘an unprecedented obscene attack’ on the judiciary when the Opposition leader Simon Busuttil criticised the board of inquiry.
I immediately wondered why the three honourable and experienced judges accepted the Taghna Lkoll appointment.
I must surmise that the three gentlemen should have a priori known that this was prima facie a matter for police officers and the Attorney General.
However, when one now knows how inefficient the higher police echelons in Malta are, it is perhaps a stroke of luck that the issue did not remain in police hands.
The three judges should resign from their appointment lest they would wish to be known as the three stooges in future.
Everyone likes to feel validated. Some are more susceptible than others. Former judges are not immune.
Nor is a dead President.
Is it worth it for people with long careers behind them to sacrifice everything for something like this cover-up?
Is it worth it for Ray Zammit and these three former judges? I don’t think so.
The inquiry by the three retired judges cannot throw a lifeline to the Prime Minister, to the minister for the police or to their entourage.
All three ex-judges risk being dragged down into the stinking drain of this evolving scandal and a cover-up that cannot be sincerely doubted any more.
Inquiries are frequently used as smokescreens:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/19/tony-blair-rebekah-brooks-phone-hacking
In the UK the Hutton inquiry has become synonymous with establishment whitewash.
Let’s put it this way: FIFA is completely free from corruption because the inquiry said so. Right?
The three judges must resign forthwith.
Any time within 24 hours please or else you are nothing but Labour muppets.
The three gentleman are wise enough not to let a jerk like Joey use them.
It will not be an easy job for them because they will have to sift through a mahoosive mountain of lies which will be thrown at them by the entire establishment.
I am sure they are up to their task and will not be overwhelmed or intimidated by the sheer magnitude of this monumental whitewash.
I wish them well in their endeavour.
It will not be easy for them to throw in the towel once they have accepted the challenge.
Joey has already “used” the three gentlemen. Why should the three retired judges regard Joey’s call as a challenge?
On another note: what are the possible comprehensive costs for this unique inquiry/investigation?
Where’s the full transcript of the calls?
The transcript released by the PN media is so disjointed it looks like a hatchet job. If those excerpts are the best of the lot, there’s really not much to shout about.
Kev, go get a life. You must be either unconscious or consciously in denial at the moment.
Kev, there is what to shout about. The fact that there were all those phone calls BEFORE the press release is enough.
In my view this also proves that Joe Muscat lied during his budget press conference and lied when Saviour Balzan interviewed him on Reporter.
It is clear that by the time the press release was issued at 23.15 all information was available to them.
It is clear that Muscat received a call informing him of the matter that evening, and he admitted it. He just doesn’t want to tell us what time he received that call.
Is he trying to convince us that Kurt called him after 23.15?
If this was the case, and if he really was ‘angry’ and ‘disgusted’ he would have fired Kurt yesterday evening, once evidence of the phone calls was published, followed shortly by firing Mallia and the police commissioner.
I know, as a leader, I would have done that.
We can do a Kessler and say “there are non-ambiguous pieces of circumstantial evidence” that suggest that the minister was told about the bullet holes, either by Sheehan or by the commissioner, or both, before his initial press release.
Somehow, I find it hard to believe that the minister would stretch his neck that far for a driver who erred.
And they say I am a ‘conspiracy theorist’. Mur gibkom tistudjaw il-politika globali bl-istess lenti!
I meant ‘press conference’ not press release.
Are you living in this world, or in cuckoo-land?
a) It proves that the shots were aimed at and hit the car.
b) It proves the Police Commissioner knew this.
c) It proives that Kurt Farrugia knew this.
d) It proves that Minister Mallia knew this.
e) It proves that even though all these people knew this a false statement was issued to the press.
f) It proves that Minister Mallia lied when he said he didn’t know the details of the incident until it was issued.
g) It proves that Mallia lied again to the press the next day.
It is also highly likely that Joseph Muscat knew about this cover-up right from the start.
What more do you expect? Joseph Muscat’s mobile calls that evening?
Well they’ve been asked for but he won’t hand them in. This does not mean that someone doesn’t already have a copy.
Gvern trasparenti indeed.
We already knew that the police were aware of the bullet holes well before the DOI release.
The transcripts do not even tell us whether Sheehan told his minister the truth, let alone whether the PM knew.
The transcripts simply confirmed what we already know: that the police knee-jerked into cover-up mode, then quickly tried to cover up the cover-up attempt.
The minister’s grave error was to initially come out in praise and in defence of his driver. But there is still no evidence that Sheehan had to that point been telling him the whole truth.
Yes, you can speculate, but I’m talking about evidence here.
Only Jo-Jo’s lies are not disjointed because they are a never ending series of lies like, in Maltese, ‘Kullana ta gideb’.
Nothing that he should be proud of.
Kev, I am more then sure that they have all the transcripts. I dare say that they have also Muscat’s call logs.
That’s probably why the transcripts were ‘acted’ by Net’s reporters and other staff.
Muscat has a big bag of ready lies. So let him squirm, let him tell more lies, then after we hear the results of this useless inquiry there will be more news.
My question would be how come these three retired gentleman have not quit.
Maybe giving the PM a little more rope? tsk tsk
‘Inkjesta’, for what? Surely the PM meant ‘quango of three’?
So is this the start of a hate campaign against the three learned former members of the judiciary?
[Daphne – Not at all. I’ve known Alberto Magri roughly since childhood, don’t know Camilleri from Adam, and Sciberras has handed down some seminal judgements. If you read my post again, David, you will see that it is about quite the opposite: they need to protect themselves from being used by those with iniquitous intentions. I doubt that they share those intentions.]
On the PBS news in an item about the presentation of prizes by the Prime Minister at his office, among the audience there was ex judge Philip Sciberras.
How appropriate is it for him to be there when he is one of the retired judges in the inquiry.
http://www.tvm.com.mt/news/ir-rebbieha-tal-premju-nazzjonali-tal-ktieb/
As the Prime Minister recently stated that, “il-poplu mil but jimpurtah”, can we please be told how much this enquiry cost us, even more so that it is now evident that it is just a time-wasting charade?
When is the “verdict” due anyway?
Since the three learned former judges are continuing and concluding their investigation, the smear campaign against their reputation will probably continue and intensify.
However they don’t need to worry as they can still restore their dignity by a minor surgical operation as suggested by the Education Minister.
[Daphne – Fantastic, David, irony! Doing really well here. I’m actually pleased. But hang on, nobody is smearing their reputation or even trying to. On the contrary, people are saying that they should not allow themselves to be used because they are better than that.]