Oh, that's cosy

Ma, x’qaqocca. Robert Musumeci becomes a columnist for Malta Today. Suddenly, Malta Today stops investigating Consuelo Scerri Herrera’s property dealings in Lija and dredging up her father the judge’s alleged links with Lorry Sant on land deals (I’ve always suspected that’s where the Ronnie Pellegrini connection comes in – he was Lorry’s righthand man and now he’s Consuelo’s torch-bearer).

Malta Today starts to champion the magistrate instead and to attack me for exposing her shortcomings. Talk about being out of synch with your readership, but anyway.

Then Malta Today begins to give positive coverage to Musumeci’s best friend Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. Suddenly, he is no longer the despicable ruinator of Mistra. He is the god who is going to introduce divorce, bring down the government and clear the way for the glorious return to Jerusalem of John Dalli, seated on a donkey called Saviour Balzan.

Now I have no problem with Pullicino Orlando’s clever use of Balzan and his axe-grinding grudges to promote his message. He does what he has to do and I think he’s been pretty smart in turning round his public image from zero to hero by means of a private member’s bill on divorce.

When I told him two and a half years ago that he should tough it out and ignore those baying for his blood because people have the memory, consistency and attention-span of a gnat, I was right.

Without going into the blasphemy of odious comparisons, it’s one of the most interesting lessons in the New Testament: that the caprice of public opinion can turn you from zero to hero and back again on a whim, and that those who championed you will wake up one day and bay to have you flogged and nailed to a wooden cross.

Herrera understands this, which is why she’s trying to tough it out. What she doesn’t understand is that the circumstances are entirely different.

The problem I have is not with Pullicino Orlando or even with Robert Musumeci; we all know by now what his problems are, and that he seems to be tackling them by adopting the messianic stance of a cult guru. Like his companion the magistrate, he too thinks he can tough it out and that his political career isn’t well and truly over.

But with Malta Today and its blatant agenda – yes, I do have a problem. It came on the scene with promises to be truly independent of partisanship and this would have been a good thing. Well, so much for that.

It majtezwel call itself John Dalli Today and advertise its championing of so-called rebel MPs for whom it discovered a fondness when it understood that they could be used to cause maximum trouble for the man who got the job that Dalli wanted.

So damned tedious – like teenage boys in the schoolyard. And then they say women bitch and backbite.

Tomorrow evening on Smash TV, Musumeci the talk-show host will launch his ‘skeda gdida’. His guest is who else but Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando.

In response to a leg-pulling remark on his Facebook ‘wall’, Musumeci replied:

Kieku l-bnedmin kollha bhal Jeffrey ibqa cert li ghandna dinja hafna iktar kuntenta.