|
I caught sight of a beaming Francis Zammit Dimech on the beauty pages of a local magazine. The Minister for Culture and Tourism was “officially” opening the Maltese outlet of a South Korean cosmetics franchise. He was photographed making a speech during the event, flanked by the young promoters of the store which is meant to be specialising in fresh, affordable cosmetics and body care products. The target market of the product consists of bright young things who want to look good and glamorous on a budget. They’d be the type of girls (and boys) going through the racks at Zara and Mango trying to find the high-street version of designer outfits. The products would appeal to people who would fancy Keira Knightley or maybe Jake Gyllenhaal as beauty icons. It’s very clear that the products are targeted at consumers who yearn for items which are innovative and attractive, both qualities which you would hardly associate with politicians however successful in their professional life.
That’s why I just couldn’t figure out why the promoters had settled on the Minister for Tourism as the ideal poster-boy to advertise their wares. Why on earth did they consider him to have the kind of pulling power necessary to draw in teenage girls looking for sparkly eye shadow or twenty-somethings seeking out a fragrant body cream? It’s not as if everybody’s queuing up outside the tourism ministry begging to be let in on Zammit Dimech’s beauty secrets. And the parliamentary questions lobbed his way are more on the lines of why his government insists on keeping us marooned on the island, rather than queries as to which brand of moisturiser the honourable Minister for Tourism would recommend.
Actually, you wouldn’t dream of asking any of the MPs about their beauty tips – most of the men are still stuck in the early nineties with the hairstyles to go with it, and the women are well-groomed and kitted out but still not the celebrities you need to be pulling in the punters at the launch of a cosmetics store or any kind of business for that matter. What you need are popular people and well-known faces who are in some way related to or who can be associated with the product you are trying to promote. To make a splash when opening a beauty shop you need local personalities, people with charisma or who pass off as celebrities. What you certainly can do without is a stuffy politician in a suit prattling on about commerce and how the government welcomes initiative and business ventures. I bet that kind of intervention will make lipstick sales soar.
I can’t get over the way that politicians are invited to launch every product under the sun and to open all sorts of events possible. I wonder why this practice has become “de rigeur”. We are either so celebrity-starved that we imagine that being driven around in a ministerial car and rubbing shoulders with the likes of Austin Gatt and Joseph Cuschieri is a very glamorous thing to do, or else we invite politicians to our launches in the hope that they will keep us in their good books and remember us when we’re having a spot of bother with the VAT or licensing department. Both are ridiculous reasons.
A friend who works in the media tells me that prominent politicians keep getting invited to launch events because their presence ensures the presence of television cameras and media coverage. This too, is proof, if any were needed, that media people (or at least those media people who trail after politicians like dopey Labrador shadows) have completely lost the plot. By deciding beforehand that anything that politicians do is newsworthy and that it should be featured, they miss out on the real news and important events and engulf us in a sea of non-news and coffee-morning coverage.
I know the old adage about no publicity being bad publicity and that any kind of coverage which improves visibility is a boon to business. However, as in all things, there are limits. Bore people enough and they will run away, screaming in desperation, taking their custom with them. I remember a fashion show I watched some months ago where two local designers displayed their summer collection. The female models wore a selection of beautiful, billowing gowns and slinky dresses in the designer duo’s signature colours of red and white. The male models wore much the same colours but their clothing was mostly restricted to tight trunks with very obvious VPL. The viewers were lapping it up. One particularly enthusiastic woman sitting behind me couldn’t wait for the show to be over to rush up and congratulate the designers and make enquiries about some outfits she wanted to buy. Then the show came to an end and the minister (the usual suspect) climbed onto the podium and gave an interminable speech about how fashion and modelling and tourism and Malta’s fortunes were inextricably linked. The fizz went out of the evening, the viewers got bored and edgy and most of them started trailing away. The woman had previously been so keen on ordering a new wardrobe stalked off. She said that if she had wanted to be bored stiff she could have just as easily stayed at home and switched on the television to watch and hear the same political speeches she had heard a thousand times before. She was right. There is such a thing as political overload. It’s not good for business and local entrepreneurs should twig on to that.
Twenty-two year old Richard Attard was given a suspended jail term for having sex with a 15-year-old girl who was (and remains) hopelessly infatuated with him. A certain John Chircop, a Maltese-Australian, is facing extradition proceedings which might result in his facing criminal charges for the rape of his stepdaughter in Australia. Hugh Flask, a British national living in Mellieha, has been remanded in custody after being charged with defiling a 10-year old boy in April. Earlier this year he had been charged with defiling another two young children. What all these people have in common is the fact that they have all been charged with having committed crimes of a sexual nature and that all of them have been named, and consequently shamed in the press.
Not so, the man from Madliena who last Thursday, pleaded guilty to possessing reams of pornographic film and photographs featuring very young children. Although the presiding magistrate described his actions as being “very repulsive” (some of the children shown in his cache of porn material were not even 9 years old), he walked out of court a mere Lm 100 poorer and with the predictable suspended sentence but with his anonymity preserved. The court ordered that his name not be published. Unlike other offenders or persons accused of even more serious crimes, the Madliena kiddie porn collector slunk back to his hidey-hole, his name unsullied and unknown to more than a handful of people who had been directly involved in the court procedures.
The ban on the publication is difficult to explain. After all the Madliena pornophile had already been found guilty of an offence, so there was no question of him being presumed innocent. And although the court may withhold the name of the accused in order to protect the identity of victims who are minors or who are family members, this was certainly not the case here. The school-age children who were forced to perform sex acts and be filmed for the man’s sweaty satisfaction couldn’t be identified from the evidence presented in court or even by his being named. It’s also a bit much to believe that the publicity ban was imposed because the court believed that the testimonies given could offend public sentiment or cause a scandal. Presumably the public is just as outraged by cases of rape and defilement, yet the court did not prohibit the publication of names of people who are accused off these either crimes.
The ban on the publication of his name got many people wondering, yet again, as to whether there are any guidelines, which the courts follow, when it comes to deciding whether the names of people accused or convicted should be made known. Judging from some recent cases it seems that the courts are pulling down the comfortable cloak of anonymity over certain offenders in a very arbitrary manner, with some lucky perpetrators being allowed to fade away into obscurity while others have to face up to the full glare of the publicity given to their case. This is terribly unfair and confirms the widely-held perception that practically every court-case is rigged and that its outcome is dependent on one’s connections. Specific rules should be laid down regulating when it is possible to ban on the publication of the name of the accused or an offender. This should do away with the present state of affairs where people who are in broadly the same position (accused of, or found guilty of a crime) are treated in a different manner altogether by the courts. Unless and until this is done, people’s faith in the local justice system – already very close to rock bottom – will continue to flounder. Can you blame them?
cl.bon@nextgen.net.mt
|
