Manuel Mallia: Jose Herrera must be laughing

Daphne Caruana Galizia Sunday, 30 June 2013, 09:30 Last update: about 11 years ago

There we were, thinking that Jose Herrera the Justice Minister would be one of Labour’s worst threats to the democratic separation of powers. But the Prime Minister surprised us all – not least Herrera – by pulling a short, fat rabbit out of his hat and making him Justice Minister instead.

He turned out to be much worse than we thought Herrera would be, and lost the Justice portfolio after just 100 days. Now the Prime Minister is also the Justice Minister, an unprecedented scenario, and Herrera continues to stew in anger while Mallia continues to, well, have the police cook his stew.

It’s been 24 hours of non-stop jokes, memes and wisecracks involving which number to call for Peter Paul Zammit’s pizza delivery, whether to call at Floriana HQ for wedding reception menus, sirens wailing ‘Hawn tad-Donuts’, police vans emblazoned with ‘Stop me and buy one’ and ‘Tanti tad-Depot’, police officers called ‘waiter’ and enquiries as to how we would like our police summonses: medium, rare or well done.

Is there a person alive and living in Malta who doesn’t yet know that Manuel Mallia, Minister for the Police, used the police force to cook and serve at a banquet for 250 European Broadcasting Union delegates at Girgenti Palace? Probably not. Over the last couple of days it’s been practically the sole topic of conversation on Facebook, and while the shock-horror aspect is there among the democratically aware, the dominant sentiment is actually of ridicule.

Minister Mallia’s request and the consent of his appointee the Police Commissioner (Mallia would have us believe that it was the other way round) to have police officers serving at the banquet have turned the police force into a laughing-stock. Mallia’s so-called ‘cost-cutting exercise’ – money saved by putting the independence of the police at risk is not money saved at all – has turned out to be the biggest public relations disaster possible.

The police are being jeered at, the Police Minister is being accused of not knowing his place in a democracy, and the Police Commissioner has signalled to the public that he is not only the Police Minister’s appointee but also his catering manager and puppet.

Meanwhile, Mallia has confirmed his reputation for having – how shall I best put it? – the attitude towards spending of a notorious character devised by Charles Dickens. And Peter Paul Zammit has demonstrated that he is unfit for purpose and does not know what is required of him as Police Commissioner. I didn’t much like John Rizzo at all and had words with him from time to time, but still, I can’t imagine him offering to do the catering for a banquet thrown by Police Minister Carm Mifsud Bonnici, having his men to serve as waiters, and Mifsud Bonnici accepting on the basis that this is a ‘cost-cutting exercise’.

This should serve to raise the alarm about Minister Mallia’s attitude towards (mis)using the services of the various entities in his diminished portfolio. If he sees nothing wrong in having the police cook and serve at his suppers, what else might he be doing? Well, he’s using the services of the army, also within his portfolio, to provide him with security at his ministry building.

There are three soldiers now on detail at his office in Strait Street, Valletta. Owen Bonnici, the Parliamentary Secretary for Justice who is supposed to have departed from beneath Manuel Mallia’s wings and taken shelter beneath the Prime Minister’s, has another three soldiers on detail.

This has not happened before. Previously, the only soldiers on detail in such a manner were at the Auberge de Castille, the obvious place to have them. The only reason Manuel Mallia and Owen Bonnici have soldiers on detail for security – the only two Cabinet members to do so – is that the army is in their ministry portfolio. Now that Owen Bonnici has been technically detached from Mallia and is working for the Prime Minister, why does he have his own soldiers?

The soldiers we are talking about here are from Bravo Company, 1st Regiment. They have been selected for their political loyalties – or, shall we say, voting preferences.

I think the Opposition spokesman for the army should ask a couple of questions in Parliament. I imagine the press will get no joy if any reporter tries doing so. If this sort of behaviour is not nipped in the bud, we may well find, in a couple of years, that the Police, Army and Broadcasting Minister is dispatching soldiers to Lidl with a shopping list and a couple of checked trolley-bags, while a policewoman washes his floors at home. But shush, don’t ask where the water came from.