From Mr J. Cassar

I refer to the letter written by Victor Laiviera from Naxxar entitled “Media Manipulation” (TMIS, 18 November).

In his letter, Mr Laiviera invited Lou Bondi and me to use what he termed “our abilities” and publish, on YouTube, the famous “Black Mass”.

I cannot speak for other people but I would like to clarify that I have never in my life had any connections or contacts with people involved in the organisation or participation of any black mass or similar activities. In fact I am quite convinced that Mr Laiviera requested me to supply videos or recordings of these types of activities in an effort to discredit me and anyone who does not agree with his opinions.

In his letter Mr Laiviera did not have the decency to comment on the content of my previous letter entitled “Labour cannot be trusted”; instead he invited me to publish a black mass on YouTube. This clearly shows that the only purpose of Mr Laiviera’s letter was to cast me in a bad light. In fact the letter written by Mr Laiviera is an exercise in intolerance and an attempt to stop people who do not agree with his views from expressing their views in the media.

Mr Laiviera should be aware that everyone has a right to freedom of expression, whether this is through letters to the press, videos on YouTube or any other media.

The Constitution grants us this right, hence I am merely exercising my right to freedom of expression when writing to the press or when publishing videos of a political nature on the website www.youtube.com.

Apparently this is not acceptable to Mr Laiviera since the political ideas I express do not conform with his own; so instead of replying to my letters and videos with counter arguments, Mr Laiviera tries to slander me by associating my activities with those who organise black masses.

Mr Laiviera also states that in my letter I tried to defend Lou Bondi. With all due respect I hardly think that Mr Bondi or “Where’s Everybody?” need me to defend them.

In my letter I did not defend Mr Bondi or his programme, all I did was raise questions associated with Labour’s proposal presented by Alfred Sant in his reply to the Budget 2008, and specifically questioned the credibility of the Labour Party’s intentions with regard to their promises to the electorate in relation to said Budget.

During the programme in question it transpired that the Labour Party promises were not based on professional consultations and it resulted that Labour did not consult anybody about these proposals. It seems they did not even take into consideration how much these measures would cost the economy or whether the country can afford the types of measures they proposed.

Again during the above-mentioned Bondiplus programme, which treated the Labour’s counter proposals to the Budget 2008, the MLP Deputy Leader Charles Mangion seemed surprised when shown the cost of his party’s proposals produced by Bondiplus!

Furthermore, viewers had to wait for an entire week for the Labour Party to come up with its own estimates on how much the Labour Party’s proposals would cost the economy.

In my opinion, this clearly shows that the proposals were not based on proper research but merely an attempt to garner votes.

In view of the above, I respectfully request that Mr Laiviera clarifies his comments regarding any alleged association with black mass organisations and related activities and retracts these allegations.

Furthermore, I invite Mr Laiviera to continue to exercise his right to freedom of expression and to reply to my letter – this time specifically to the content of my letter and not by mentioning Black Masses. If Mr Laiviera fails to retract his allegations I shall have no option but to seek legal advice.

Jurgen Cassar

MARSASCALA