Michael Falzon, Labour deputy leader and saintly scapular wearer, filed a libel action against In-Nazzjon for replicating word for word comments he gave to The Times which, in the first place, he might have been better off had he not.
Falzon claims he felt libelled by the report in In-Nazzjon which, he said, was aimed at tarnishing his reputation and exposing him to public ridicule. This is indeed a peculiar kind of logic, given that it was Falzon himself who told The Times the following quotable piece: “our (Labour’s) problem is that some people feel they cannot trust Labour enough”.
The Nationalist organ, always on the lookout for statements that can expose their authors to public ridicule and a tarnished reputation, pounced upon the quote and made a slap-up political meal out of it. Funny – you could make an entire carnival float from such a banality coming out of a party official.
The last time Falzon filed a libel suit, namely against this newspaper, he told a Labour audience in Rabat, while raging against MaltaToday, that the two dearest things in his life were his kids, and his scapular. The magical potency of this holy talisman, which he famously stated has also accompanied him into every examination he’s taken (obviously after a mad night of cramming), must be wearing off.
It stands to reason that Falzon should be suing himself for libel, but since Maltese law does not provide for that kind of self-redemptive measure, it will be left up to In-Nazzjon to prove in court that its neat piece of copy-and-paste reporting was just that. Fancy your opposition taking political mileage out of what you say! The cheek of it all…

The fax machine produced the following statement from Labour this week: “PN must apologise publicly for racist comments”.
The matter in question related to the kind of idiotic, mind numbing, gormless bollocks local councils quibble over. In this case, it was asked by il-mument whether Hamrun mayor Luciano Busuttil had donated any money to the band club of the parish church of the Immaculate Conception. So continued the moronic inquiry: “If not, why? Are these people black?” (Jekk le, ghaliex, mela dawn suwed?)
The Labour councillors instantly reacted to the “dangerous xenophobic sentiment” implied in this racist idiom usually deployed by lobotomised inmates from inside party headquarters.
And yet last week it was Fgura mayor Darren Marmara who complained of the refuse being generated by a government edifice housing 65 asylum seekers, claiming that the 15 bags of rubbish from the African residents which remain uncollected on Sundays was “unacceptable” – given that they double to 30 bags on Monday morning. So iz it unacceptable coz dey iz black? Or woq?

The strategists at Mile End have deployed self-proclaimed Nationalist activist Michael Woods as a dodgy plank on which to attack Lawrence Gonzi. His brother Thomas – formerly assistant private secretary to the health minister before the long arm of the law caught up with him – is to be arraigned in court on charges of corruption in the award of invalidity pensions.
Woods appeared on One TV as a ‘PN critic’ accusing Gonzi of a campaign to remove all those elements who had not supported his leadership bid – amongst them, he said, was his brother Thomas Woods, who apparently fancied John Dalli in the prime ministerial seat, and was therefore one of the victims in this episode from Pietà’s hounding of the Gang of Four.
Heaven forbid that the corruption charges are mentioned as a possible case of dismissal. For Michael Woods, his brother’s fate has been the tragic result of his dubious choice for party leader. Now the saga is expected to continue, One News announced yesterday.
You do remember Sant’s exceptional budget response in which he promised zero-tolerance on corruption? With that in mind, Labour now chooses to use a man arraigned for allegedly receiving meat, fish, rabbits and wine from applicants for invalidity pension (sounds like something from Ulied in-Nanna Venut fl-Amerka) to get back at Gonzi through his obliging sibling on the Labour media. What will One TV give us next – the transmogrification of faces into hairy bottoms?

mvella@mediatoday.com.mt