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I do not happen to possess any Mossad patented telecommunications interception and eavesdropping equipment but I always have an inkling of more or less what is happening around me. It is all thanks to leaks and people who love to gossip.
Sunday: it’s a wonderful northerly breeze and two gentlemen host a small garden party. No relation whatsoever, but both men refer to MaltaToday, in different ways of course.
On this side of Naxxar, the revelations about how their company has, will or may benefit from a tendering process, has landed MaltaToday in the good company of French wines and irate words.
“How dare they? We will break them, stop their advertising, break their backs. This reporting is meant specifically to harm us!”
In another garden, wine flows by the litre, good French Chablis I am told. A senior Labour official puts a brake on all the praise for MaltaToday and reminds the dozen or so fellows there that MaltaToday is not so pure: they too do not carry all the stories.
He is asked when and how, and he reminds them that MaltaToday did not report the case brought against a director of Where’s Everybody for the alleged attempted defilement of a minor. And why? “Because they (MaltaToday) are in cahoots with Where’s Everybody” (Gratuitous laughter ensues).
Hardly anyone noticed that last week: two of MaltaToday’s cover stories, the news report on a English company’s financial status and its interest in a major Mater Dei contract, would have indirectly favoured a rival competitor which happens to be a subsidiary company belonging to Bertu Mizzi.
It did not stop here, the other top story on the Israelis winning the controversial legal interception contract led one to believe that this newspaper was supporting the rival bidder once again, which also includes a subsidiary company of Bertu Mizzi.
So there you go, I too can be Bertu Mizzi’s friend, after all.
In the Financial Times this week, the same English company iSoft, vying for an IT contract at Mater Dei, was torn to shreds by the esteemed British newspaper. The FT has quoted iSoft’s discomfort with MaltaToday’s reports on its doubtful future and whether this company will be strong enough to deliver the Mater Dei IT system by December of this year.
But you see it is okay if the FT says it. When we say it over here, all hell breaks loose. Here, our revelations are interpreted as devious and irresponsible.
In the other Naxxar garden where the Labour party official accused MaltaToday of being a stooge, none of the guests present were told the true story behind the attempted defilement case.
I do not know the former director of Where’s Everybody, probably having only spoken to him twice in my life and he is not Lou Bondi or Joe Azzopardi, two characters who have featured in this column innumerable times.
Interestingly, MaltaToday and everyone else is accused of not publishing anything about the case. But guess what, no one was informed of the police citation not even the accused. He only realised that he would be facing criminal proceedings from the MLP internet site Maltastar, obviously after a leak from the police.
The former WE director is accused of the attempted defilement of a minor, based on some chats on the computer. I will not be too surprised if the court ends up with some interesting evidence that would lead to this case being thrown out.
The Police had investigated the allegation that the WE former director met the minor and had sex with her. It transpired that the minor concocted the encounter yet the police continued with their investigation.
Providentially for the former WE director he had an alibi, including a hospital register that he proves that he was being operated on when he was supposedly having it off with the minor.
The Police plodded on, despite the fact that they knew that this minor never met or saw the WE man.
The WE man claims he did not know the age of the person he was chatting with on the internet.
Now I have never visited brothels, slept with Slav girls or even entertained myself at the local lap-dancing club. I know I must be missing something, but I am a nerd really and truly.
But sexual implicitness on the internet is altogether another thing, and I have yet to meet that male surfer who has only used his computer to play Solitaire and not to peep at some of the unbelievable lewd acts on the net.
I have had several brushes with WE, and MaltaToday has been at the forefront in publishing revealing stories about WE, but to embark on a demolition mission on the pretext of an alleged sexual misadventure is daft.
That is not the point of this newspaper.
In the last weeks I have been taunted by a top Labour guy, “I will test your independence,” he said.
If this is it, then I have to say I am very disappointed.
I was expecting something better, such as when another WE character, a former Lorry Sant henchman and freemason, a Labourite diehard was accused of fabricating false evidence (which the Prime Minister chose to believe) about a Mater Dei contract. Then we were the first to cry wolf.
The Labour press chose not to report one word, whisper one vowel or burp one consonant about the police and court proceedings.
How is that for a test? How is that for independence?
Richard Muscat, the ambassador who should renounce his ambassadorship, has instituted libel proceedings against this newspaper.
Two libel suits to be precise.
His bone of contention is that we erroneously stated that a Voice of the Mediterranean contract was awarded to a company which was owned by his son, when we should have said that the company employed his son. This detail changes nothing from the bigger picture.
Muscat a Juventus fan should have been advised to resign a while ago, but instead the former Fenech Adami aficionado was defended by ministers Austin Gatt and Michael Frendo, and eventually Richard took some enlightened suggestion to libel MaltaToday.
The Prime Minister should have asked him to leave his post in Ireland. The fact that he did not sheds more light on the PM’s incapacity to smell the coffee.
I am convinced that the decisive moment of not deciding is in the genetic make-up of Lawrence Gonzi and his government.
If the PM had asked Richard Muscat to resign he would have won some brownie points, something he badly needs in such a detached and depressed atmosphere in Nationalist political circles.
I am sure that if things do not change fast, President Edward Fenech Adami will be reading Alfred Sant’s speech as Malta elects him to Prime Minister in the next round of national elections.
But back to Muscat. The man is obviously hoping that he will weaken us in the courts, because he did not libel Kullhadd, Super One, It-Torca or l-orrizont or any of the English-language newspapers. It had got to be MaltaToday because he knows that this is the newspaper that is widely read by the pale blues and pale reds, the folk who read and ask themselves, why hasn’t this Richard Muscat tendered his resignation?
He is obviously badly advised. I would have expected his lawyer Joseph Zammit Maempel, head of the noble lotteries and gaming authority and the PN’s chief legal advisor to suggest to his client that this will cause more damage to his image in the long run.
He would have hit the nail on the head and served his client with some good advice. But Zammit Maempel is in the same league as Muscat when it comes to abhorring MaltaToday.
Richard Muscat’s spending spree at the Voice of the Mediterranean will have to be analysed in court. Many Nationalists who knew Richard Muscat have recounted to me wonderful anecdotes about his life with the Nationalist party. They make wonderful accompaniments with white wine and stuffat tal-bebbux. Thankfully, many of the legendary attributes about Richard Muscat will not dissipate in the coming months.
A very close associate to the Prime Minister said that Gonzi is fully aware of how bad the situation is for the Nationalist party.
He adds that Gonzi is coming to terms with the fact that he should have carried out a Cabinet reshuffle. He added the PM is scared that a miniterial reshuffle will lose him more constituency votes.
Someone needs to tell him that he has nothing to lose by shaking up the Cabinet and sending the tired and useless ministers and junior ministers to the backbenches.
If Gonzi loses the election we will have Prime Minister Alfred Sant for ten years, and though I am all for a change in faces, I am not quite sure if Malta deserves these kind of politicians.
Probably Sant says the same about the media, but it us who needs convincing not him.
It was pointed out to me that the greatest failure of MEPA, apart from turning into a monster, was its incompetence and failure in drawing up precise maps of past, present and future schemes. Its inability to translate the situation on the ground into correct cartographic representations led to their failure to implement local plans.
No wonder MEPA staff are the highest paid of all public-funded employees.
The greatest sin committed by George Pullicino was his argument (which I was admittedly gullible enough to swallow) about Gozitan couples who had been cheated of a housing plot after buying land from the Gozitan Curia: what he did not say is that the Gozitan Curia had irresponsibly sold plots of land outside the development scheme that should never have been in any building scheme in Gozo. In the contract it was clear that these plots where not guaranteed for building sites.
All the couples or singles or speculators knew they were taking a gamble. Pullicino argued that these were discriminated Gozitans.
Why discriminated? Why, George?
Their inclusion in the extended zone is tantamount to the worst kind of building extension similar to what we saw in the eighties.
George has been badly bruised by this whole episode. This week as the bulldozers awaited the green light to rampage the ODZ he dragged a freelance photographer to take mug shots of himself shaking hands with bystanders at the Beer Festival.
He will need more than a few handshakes to shake off the mistake of what he has called a rationalisation process.
Any political moderating force must have a green, blue and red hue. I wonder if people like former and present union heavies Emmanuel Micallef and Josephine Attard Sultana would fit in such a role.
I am sure they could.
Walking at Manikata, to see the road works next to the once upon a time Xaghra l-Hamra Golf course one cannot miss the carelessness of the road engineers and planners. Along the road, rubble is tipped and farmland and garrigue is scrapped and destroyed.
You get the impression that land is not a rare commodity but in abundant supply.
Should we be surprised? With Jesmond Mugliett at the helm, our road works are a massive let down.
I thought Louis Deguara was a sleeping beauty.
How wrong I was.
I have been told that I must try and say something positive in my opinion. So here I go, and I have to say I am trying very hard.
The Malta Arts Festival is a wonderful experience, and this idea of transforming streets in Valletta into pedestrian zones with open bars and flowing wine is a jolly good idea.
Striking vocalists, beautiful music and stunning young men and women trying to stop thinking about the bleakness around them (how’s that for positive?).
Air Malta CEO Joe Cappello broke with tradition and apologised publicly for an Air Malta diversion in Paris Orly. Air Malta’s example should be followed by other parastatal companies.
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