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The Court of Appeal declared this week the freedom of the press was absolute but similarly, the right of the individual to enjoyment of his honour and reputation was also absolute.
The court was of course referring to Profs Louis Buhagiar. You will not blame me if I choke in my own saliva. Here is a man who earned hundreds of thousands of liri, has business interests in care services, old people’s home and God knows what.
When some months ago I wrote I would be willing to spend time behind bars instead of forking out Lm4,000 to Louis Buhagiar, I did not know that legally this would not be possible. The time will come when I will gladly take up this pledge.
Don’t worry Profs, if it’s the money you wish then so be it, but not before another legal fight, and this time we are considering to take it to the European mainland.
Some weeks ago, the same lawyer who defended Buhagiar, a Labour MP, defended a Gozitan man accused of drug trafficking – 1,954 ecstasy pills to be precise, injuring a police sergeant, damaging two police cars and possessing a shotgun without a licence and relapsing – and called on the magistrate to have his name withheld from the press.
It appears that a request to have the 23-year-old Gozitan from being known to the world was fuelled by the fact that at the time he was enamoured to a very well-known journalist.
The court acceded to the request.
I will not say what I think of this court decision, but I will let everyone’s imagination run amok.
Now just for a moment imagine if any Joe Bloggs was caught with just ten ecstasy pills not 1,954, kissed a police sergeant instead of injuring him, possessed a plastic gun and sang a song a decibel too high, his name no doubt would be plastered everywhere. Not to have one’s name censored and barred Joe Bloggs would require a bimbo for a cohort.
MaltaToday is far too popular, far too anchored and far too well read to fall apart because of any unfair judgement.
When three priests were accused of having abused infants they were duty bound to raise as good Catholics, the court did the same. The court decided that the media could not broadcast or print the names. The media were barred from even following the proceedings.
Thankfully for us, we printed the names before the court could issue the ban.
The time has come for some journalists to break this diktat and to do time. The only way to stop us from printing relevant news stories is for someone to buy us out of MaltaToday and turn MaltaToday into a photocopy of all the other newspapers.
What was not recognised as a fact by the courts was that Louis Buhagiar was unpopular with the MLP administration for reasons which were never ours. One such reason stemmed from Buhagiar’s decision to ignore the MLP’s boycott of Where’s Everybody. He was hailed a hero then by the PN press as he appeared on l-Istrina together with Karmenu Vella in defiance of his own party.
And yet, the MLP’s decision not to allow him to be elected as a parliamentarian by not selecting his constituency for a by-election in 2003 is somehow blamed on MaltaToday.
Well, never mind.
Anyone with the patience to read about the complaints lodged against Louis Buhagiar with reference to his medical profession should read on patiently through our archives on the web, available at no cost, and those of The Times and Il-Mument.
Indeed many stories about Louis Buhagiar were published before MaltaToday decided to follow the story but for obvious reasons they were not taken up for libel.
This is not the first libel for damages and it will not be the last.
Dom Mintoff, Gino Cauchi, Mark Sammut and Bertu Mizzi have all libelled MaltaToday await in earnest their pound of flesh.
The Press Club, which has long lost the plot being too busy organising competitions to award trophies to its committee members with the same zeal of a group of elderly British ex-pats preparing afternoon tea in the Bahamas, have not quite realised that this is the highest ever court libel ever awarded in the history of the Maltese press.
It is a precedent that should kick the Press Club into action. Unfortunately, instead of tackling the real issues they seem to spend most of their time polishing their silver with duraglit.
Which takes me straight to Charles Mangion.
The reaction to Notary Mangion’s actions, first as a Pender Place sale basher, then as a notary to the sale, have been mixed.
Of all the people in the world to stand up and defend Charles Mangion, please discover Andrew Borg Cardona. Now, we have opted for a truce. But Bocca, as we all know will allow me to present these observations.
First of all, he misquoted the news report attributing comments by Charles Mangion to the newspaper saying that we stated there was a conflict of interest when we asked the question about conflict of interest. Even lawyers sometimes make mistakes and are not precise.
Borg Cardona found time and space in his column to criticise MaltaToday’s story but strangely could not find a bad word for the week-long barrage by the PN media on Mangion. Strange but true, Bocca!
And next time you decide to articulate an argument please make it clear to your readers that the reason that Notary Mangion parachuted uninvited in MaltaToday is because he was the person to have captained a campaign against the sale of Pender Place.
Just imagine dear Andrew, if tomorrow morning we read in one of those exciting dailies that you, as defender of the tobacco industry, were to act as a lawyer to Dr Mario Spiteri, anti-smoking crusader at the head of the Health Promotion Unit. The situation would be certainly farcical, hardly damning maybe.
In the case of Charles Mangion however, the man who wants to be deputy Prime Minister, it is a question of political credibility.
According to Bocca we should sit down and say to ourselves in our typical Maltese accent, “iva what’s wrong?”
What Notary Mangion does about his notarial contracts is his business. Or is it his problem? According to Bocca it is, so I am sure Andrew will also call on us to be considerate with Mangion when he acted as the notary (in the good old days of Lorry Sant) for the notorious Labour thug Piju Camilleri for land deals that have been the focus of a number of magisterial inquiries on political corruption in the eighties.
Notary Mangion is an affable kind of guy but he fails to understand how many Labourites who are not in on the Nationalist conspiracy are trying to come to terms with the news of his ‘professionalism’.
Now he accuses MaltaToday of being in collusion with the PN. Nonsense, Charles, and you know it. Just because we question you does not mean we have become Nationalists. It reminds me of when the PN accuses us of being in cahoots with Labour.
Mangion knows that when Labourites listen to sermons from the mount about a poverty-stricken nation, about fiscal morality, fat cats, barons and networks, they cannot come to terms with the news that one of their own is no way near the three vows of chastity, obedience and poverty.
Charles Mangion, has a simple choice to make. Is his priority going to be the money he makes as a notary, or acting as Labour’s deputy leader and remains consistent about what he says? It appears he cannot decide.
He is undoubtedly one of Malta’s most popular notaries together with Nationalist MP Tony Abela, who comes close as runner-up. It is not their fault if they are the most popular notaries, but we all know that some ‘fat cats’ as Alfred Sant likes to call them seek their services because they are under the false premise that working with these notaries is one way of guaranteeing political indemnity.
Alfred Sant’s decision not to comment about Notary Mangion’s faux pas says more about his strong conviction that the less one says the better. But this matter cannot be swept under the carpet.
His decision to keep mum reminds me of George Pullicino’s refusal to comment on Ta’ Cenc. And if that were not enough, George Pullicino decides to effectively boycott MaltaToday and the TV programme Int X’Tahseb? His spokesman gives the lame excuse that he has a very busy schedule. Needless to say, yesterday he was officiating a skateboarding competition as part of his “busy schedule”.
Well, let’s face it, skateboarding should always precede pain-in-the-a** journalists.
George Pullicino’s condescension pales in the haughtiness of Tonio Borg who only three weeks ago bragged on Radio 101 that the writing-off of an outstanding rent bill of Lm109,965, owed by the Nationalist diehards who owned the now demolished Jumbo Lido, was not a precedent.
Tonio Borg finally disclosed that there were other cases and the ones he mentions can only make us snigger. The first one involves the Nationalist Party when in January 2005, the PN had its outstanding ground rent for a site at Psaila Street forgiven by the government.
And then the second exemption, when in May 2002, the PN government had written off outstanding rents owed by the MLP on land at Ghajn Tuffieha. The only precedent involving a private company was set by the now dissolved Cottonera Properties Limited. On March 2000, the government had waived an outstanding rent bill on buildings and a chapel at Fort St Angelo at Vittoriosa that had been granted on emphytheusis to Cottonera Properties Limited.
No wonder Tonio Borg found it so difficult to come up with the other examples!
My final tribute is to the Maltese roads, the ones that will not be seeing another CHOGM until death do us part.
Where is Jesmond Mugliett and his fix-it team? Only God knows.
sbalzan@mediatoday.com.mt
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