Brass necks are back in fashion, and this past week saw two of them parading down Malta’s high street, squeaking viciously. One of those brass necks is worn by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who perverted his rule-of-law obligations by filing a request for the prosecution of the Opposition leader, because the Opposition leader took documented evidence of some of Mr Schembri’s secretly-set-up offshore companies and underhand financial transactions directly to the magistrates when the police failed for more than a year to do anything about them.
And another of those brass necks is worn by Kurt Farrugia, head of government communications and the fourth man who accompanied the Panama Trio to Azerbaijan for secret meetings with the dictator-bosses there, only to be uncovered when Azerbaijan’s English-language state news portal, not knowing that the trip had been concealed from the Maltese press and public, uploaded copious photographs of it. Mr Farrugia lent his name to a nasty opinion piece a couple of days ago, which was published in a newspaper, saying that no tears will be shed for the Opposition leader when he resigns. The point he missed is that Simon Busuttil will not be going anywhere, but staying in Parliament to carry on snapping at the Panama Trio’s increasingly calloused heels.
I say that Mr Farrugia lent his name to the piece because he cannot possibly have written it. Words and writing styles are my stock in trade, and I can say with confidence that those words and that writing style are not his. This is no big matter: it is standard practice for politicians, ambassadors, CEOs and other big cheeses to have their speeches and newspaper articles written for them by staffers whose job it is to do just that. But in this particular case, we have a chief of government communications, whose job includes crafting speeches and newspaper articles for his political bosses, being unable to craft even his own. Meritocracy & c & c – but let’s not get into that. Most of us know how bad the situation is, even if we chose to vote for it.
Kurt Farrugia’s piece – apologies, the piece to which he lent his name – struck a hugely discordant note in a political atmosphere that is already badly cacophonic. It was poorly received because of its malice, spite and nastiness, the governing characteristics of the Labour Party propaganda department for which Mr Farrugia toiled so haplessly for so many years until his boss’s victory gave him what he clearly thinks of as interminable and unlimited power, glory and the right and duty to be unbelievably crass and arrogant.
In brief, that opinion piece which carried Mr Farrugia’s name made people sick, and because the newspaper which published it also ran a news story saying, more or less, ‘Oh dear God, look what the head of government communications has written about the Opposition leader’, Mr Farrugia himself has been branded as a nasty piece of work with no grace in victory and who fails to distinguish between his role as head of government communications and that of propaganda secretary of the Malta Labour Party.
Instead of hiding themselves away in shame or keeping a low profile, these individuals and their malicious fellows are now crowing from the rooftops: “Look at us! Not only are we completely untouchable by the police and the wheels of justice, but we’re also immune from the ravages of public opinion, because we have been returned to power with another solid majority. So now we know that people don’t care if we’re corrupt or thieving, if we’re fixing contracts, as long as we brush lots of crumbs off the table to the beggars beneath it. And what’s more, now we’re going after our accusers with a vicious vengeance, because attack is the best form of defence and we can use our power to behave abusively there too.”
These deeply unattractive individuals, with their voracious hunger for power and money, are only going to become worse, more defiant and arrogant, more cobra-like in their desire to swallow whatever they can, as they count down the next five years. During the first four years, they bothered about their public image. You have to bear in mind that they never thought their secret Panama companies and New Zealand trusts would be discovered, not in a million years – and they were discovered only by the most extraordinary set of circumstances. Now that we know about their underhand dealings and have still voted them back in, and given that they have no intention of seeking re-election (at least, the boss-man has said he hasn’t), they’re not going to bother applying the brakes on any aspect of their behaviour.
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