Emerging skeletons

There is no time like an election for airing the cupboards, bringing out the other party’s skeletons and dusting them off.  As a counter attack to the oil procurement scandal, which gets juicier by the day, what has been unearthed is that all is not well in the political party clubs.
Sometime between the end of 2009 and 2010, Tony Abela, one of the Labour party’s deputy leaders was told that a friend of the barman in the Labour Party (PL) Safi club was seen in the kitchen cutting up a white block of what we are not sure of, but some sort of drug. This was revealed to the public through a recording released last week.

The incident was not reported to the police at the time of the discovery. Defending his decision, Tony Abela told The Times that his “biggest duty was to see that the club is no longer occupied by people who could harm those who visit the centre”, that “the evidence had been disposed of” and to keep up the good name of the party”.

However, his actions proved to have had the opposite effect and have come back to haunt the PL at the worst possible time. Instead of keeping up “the good name of the party”, it has now popped up to damage the PL. Besides, his argument that he was protecting people is weak, this because people who deal in drugs can harm lots of people and not only those “who visit the centre”, so if he believed that the person seen with drugs could harm people, his duty was to make a report. Even more so, if as he claims, “The members of the committee were terrorised”.

It would then have been up to the police to worry about that and whether witnesses were ready to speak up and whether to follow it up. What I find a bit hard to believe is if the club president was so terrified of the man with the block, how come he could dispose of the stuff with no come back?

Of course the PN (Nationalist Party) or the Prime Minister had notified the police in 2010, I presume, (since that is when the recording is said to have reached the Prime Minister). The police made their first enquires then and had interviewed “all the persons involved” in the case but none of the statements revealed any details or information “which could further lead to identify the person or place mentioned in the recording”. Well, now the police know the place and are again investigating the “white block” affair and have asked the PL’s president of the Safi club for a statement.

Tony Abela does however have a point in questioning (rhetorically) why the Prime Minister saw fit to release the recording at this crucial time when he had it in his possession four years ago, since that was when the police held their first investigation on the case.
A worrying comment came from Joseph Muscat when he told reporters, on Tuesday, “now that the PN had given the barman refuge”. He was talking about the barman sacked by Tony Abela in the drug case. According to Joseph Muscat the barman had approached him wanting to be reinstated but he was refused. So it looks like the police can now identify the barman whose friend was allegedly chopping the ‘block’ in the club kitchen. I do hope that he is not ensconced in a PN club now.

The plot thickened when the PN earlier this week published letters sent to Joseph Muscat in 2009 and 2012 from the sacked Safi barman, claiming he had been framed and treated unfairly by the party. On Friday, we also heard that a 2010 police investigation into the PN’s Mosta club ended with five people being arraigned on drug-related charges, including three who ran the bar. Apparently, the PN released the latter to show that unlike the PL it did the right thing.

It said it had received reports about music after-hours and other complaints about the bar’s management, including the type of people who frequented the bar. It cooperated with the police to probe these reports. The person running the bar was not the same person contracted by the party and the club was closed immediately.

So it seems that both sides are open to a criminal element and there was a problem with drugs in clubs belonging to both parties. Of course these two drug incidents are the only ones that have surfaced so far and they are part of the tactics to persuade voters on whom they can place their trust, otherwise why have we heard about them now.
As though the electorate is not confused enough. I am not talking about the diehard partisans who seem to be unbelievably blinkered, but the thinking public.

Published in the Malta Independent on Sunday 24/02/2013

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Poor Valletta

 

I am a fan of architecture and when editing the Malta Sunday Times supplements, Architecture was my favourite. As in most other genre, my taste is quite eclectic and I love some contemporary buildings as well as my favourite Baroque, the latter maybe because of the Knights of Malta’s heritage – Valletta, the city I was born and grew up in.

I was therefore interested in watching Renzo Piano being interviewed by Sarah Montague on Hard Talk (BBC World) because I cannot forgive him for replacing our city gate with a gap. The top of the gate was one of the few access points into Valletta and since it lead me via Hastings Gardens to where I grew up I miss it terribly.

He was being interviewed as the Shard in London was officially opened this month. I had walked past the construction site often on my way from London Bridge Station to my son’s apartment and had watched its progress with interest. So what did Piano have to say about perhaps the tallest building in Western Europe right now?

He did not agree when Sarah Montague asked him “Isn’t the Shard a monument to wealth and power?” Because he said it is open to everyone. She also asked him whether he agreed that the public should pay £25 (to go to the top, I presume). He said he did not, but that it was beyond his control, which of course it is. Architects always avoid uncomfortable questions by saying “Ah, but it is the client who rules”. When I recently asked an architect, discussing that point generally, “Couldn’t the architect just refuse a project if s/he disagrees on certain principals?” His response was “Yes, but then the client would just go to another architect.” Meaning s/he would lose the work.

Anyway, what really struck me in the Piano interview was this “I do not live in the sensation that everything I do is right. It is always a great surprise... If you make something wrong it is wrong forever”, Ms Montague asked him does it mean “If you do something wrong you can’t fix it?” Piano answered, “Exactly, that’s the tragedy. That is why as an architect you have a very dangerous job to perform and it is even more dangerous for the other people because if you do something wrong it is forever.”

Poor Valletta

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Face off

Never have we been reminded so persistently that politics monopolise the news, to the point that people who are not engrossed in the whole election shebang are fed up to their back teeth with all the shenanigans. It must be said that the Labour Party (PL) is coming across as cooler and not as defensive as the Nationalist Party (PN), which is showing signs of desperation.
It is not surprising that at election time tension is running high and some people do lose their cool. But I have to say that I found certain remarks, made by the previously debonair MEP Simon Busuttil in one of the latest face offs between the PN and the LP, simply inane.
First of all, of course both parties use people to their advantage. Because, that was the context of Simon’s latest, quite silly, comment when he told Deborah Schembri that the Labour Party (PL) was using her because she had a Nationalist face.
The PN infighting caused by Franco Debono was milked by the PL and now the PN is doing the same with Anglu Farrugia and exploiting the PL’s “links with contractors” and being “too close to big business”.
But hang on a minute, does not the PN have links with big contractors and is also close to big business? A run through past and current media stories will show that it does. So what’s the excitement?

The latest, real hot potato and which the court has put media restrictions on under the terms of the Money Laundering Act, is the ongoing investigation into the oil procurement case. On Friday night, Cabinet accepted the advice, of the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner, to recommend the granting of a presidential pardon for businessman George Farrugia in return for information on the case. Although any added information would obviously help the police they apparently already have ample evidence to secure convictions.
So why is Simon Busuttil harping on about the PL’s business contacts? He also went one step further and claimed, “Big contractors are dictating Labour Policy”. But are they? Did Anglu say this in his interview with the Sunday Times? More on that later.

Regarding Ms Schembri, she came to the limelight during her successful push for divorce in that campaign and, if I remember correctly, it was because of the PN’s stance against divorce that she left that party. Now, one might have thought that the PN’s deputy leader meant that her face was known as being a PN candidate, but apparently not.
He was also quoted as giving a warning, “The packaging of those who had started to wear a Nationalist cloak would come apart and the real face of Labour would be uncovered”. He named Karmenu Vella, Alex Sceberras Trigona and Evarist Bartolo as among those presenting a Nationalist front. The claim is that rather than a ‘New Labour’ image the PL was trying on a Nationalist mask.
I know it is carnival time but all this cloak and mask stuff is a little over the top. I am afraid that not so simple Simon has lain himself wide open to ridicule, which is not something I would have expected from him.

Now, if we are going to be talking about faces, Simon Busuttil’s face gives the impression of an open, sincere and sophisticated man and not of one to succumb to such ridiculous comments and manipulate issues to suit, which brings me to The Times online “Pictures of the week” quote yesterday  “Anglu Farrugia's explosive comments in a Sunday Times interview”.
For those of you interested to know whether Anglu’s comments were indeed explosive and want to know what he actually said in the interview, here we go: “I say contractors are close to the Labour Party, like some are close to the Nationalist Party. My problem with contractors is that it triggers fears of corruption.” That is what Anglu said in the Sunday Times interview.
I really can’t see why the PN are getting so excited that businessmen and contractors are courting the PL. They should be well used to being courted by the same people. Besides, we have seen a fair amount of hobnobbing by PN executives and ministers with businessmen and contractors. The latter obviously want to be well in with whoever has the power and purse strings.

Thankfully, despite all the mud slinging on both sides, the campaign has not proved volatile and if the worst thing to be slung at one is that one’s face demonstrates one’s politics, which is how some people perceived it, we should be grateful.
I was quite shocked as I was waiting for something decent (as in good quality) to pop up on my car radio, the scanner picked up a Maltese song (I am afraid I don’t know which channel) saying something along the lines of “It is a good thing I know you otherwise I would smash your face in (inkisirleq wiccex)”. Since faces have been on my mind that phrase stuck. Should any local radio station be transmitting such violent language?

Published in The Malta Independent on Sunday 10/02/2013

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Knights of Malta to open soup kitchens...in Britain - timesofmalta.com

 My how we have regressed!


Knights of Malta to open soup kitchens...in Britain - timesofmalta.com

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