I noticed that The Times yesterday interviewed a few prisoners who had been released early because of the amnesty celebrating the Labour victory, and their families. They were all hard-luck cases: a refugee caught stealing, a man who hadn’t paid maintenance to his wife, and another man longing to see his 24-year-old son were among them. You couldn’t help but sympathise.
Did the newspaper find these people on its own initiative, or were they found by the National Security Ministry’s public relations department? I couldn’t help but notice that the list of interviewees did not include one Ian Farrugia, who had been sent down for complicity in the theft of master paintings from the collection of Giovanni Bonello, who was appointed, by the same minister who had Farrugia set free early, to head the Justice Reform Commission. This is the same Ian Farrugia who was present at the murder attempt on Richard Cachia Caruana, and who left a palm print on the latter’s car that night, but who was let off by the jury. I shouldn’t have to remind you that that the National Security Minister was defence lawyer for the most prominent defendant in this case. This is hardly a hard luck story, so it is no surprise that his ministry wasn’t putting Ian Farrugia in touch with reporters, sympathetic or otherwise.
Oh look, it’s my old friend Sandro
It turns out that the convict the National Security Minister was filmed embracing during his party in the prison courtyard was none other than ex Labour MP Sandro Schembri Adami, who was jailed for embezzling money from clients (he was a notary but has since been divested of his warrant).
So let’s say Manuel Mallia was surprised and delighted to see him – why though, when he knew he was there and it was hardly a chance encounter in the Khyber Pass? Even given his surprise and delight, was all that hugging and squashing appropriate? No, it was not. A Cabinet minister shouldn’t really be hugging and squashing anyone in a public context, because some gravitas is required, let alone a convict who also happens to be a former member of parliament on your party ticket.
That’s the scene which annoyed people most, but the National Security Minister, clearly an inhabitant of the Other Malta (always was), can’t work out why. “You have got to have some Christian charity,” he said to us sternly. But it’s not about charity, is it – Christian or otherwise. Some people just like their Cabinet ministers to have a bit of dignity and to know how to behave. It feels more than odd to be watching Manuel Mallia one moment trying to comport himself with grandeur while raising himself up to his full height and girth (helped by a tall podium) so as to inspect the troops, and then the next moment watch him celebrating with criminals in a prison courtyard.
Not as bad as Berlusca
I read about the Italians and I console myself that we have a long, long way to go before we get there. The National Security Minister might have been seen having a jolly good time with convicts but it’s a little hard to imagine him doing the same with the ladies.
The latest embarrassment is the testimony of Nicole Minetti, the dental hygienist charged with procuring women for then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. “I loved him,” she told the court, “and I never invited anyone to attend parties at his home.”
Honestly, some women suffer delusion on such a grand scale that there should be a special award for them. Love Berlusconi? Well, sure – one supposes somebody had to. His wife certainly hated his guts and who can blame her. And as far as it is possible to love a man who wears foundation make-up, speaks and behaves like Benny Hill and has hair from his unmentionables transplanted onto his head, then I suppose we can believe that she believed it herself. At least all those other women were quite clear about the fact that they were only in it for the money and what they thought was power and influence over the prime minister. One of them even thought he would get her a job as some kind of showgirl with RAI. I can’t help thinking that there must be much easier ways to make a living, even if you have to slog at a supermarket cash register all day long. Surely it beats having to bunga-bunga with your grandpapa in your grandmama’s make-up.
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