In her mission to denigrate at all costs Opposition Leader Alfred Sant, your columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia always rushes in where fools fear to tread.

She did it again in her article Honour, pride and contempt for women (TMID 22 November), when referring to a snippet in Dr Sant’s It-Torca column of the previous Sunday. There, he complained about how the electronic mini-converters (euro-to-lira) that Bank of Valletta posted to households either had an expired battery, or carried none.

Ms Caruana Galizia told us that: “The funniest story of all was the one about the opposition leader who wrote... that the euro-converter he received from the government... has no battery, while his mother’s... just...died out. We know that Dr Sant... is not part of the information age... But even I know that the calculator... does not have a battery that you stick in and change when it runs out. The euro-converters are the same; the “battery” is built in, and the converter switches itself off. The parliamentary secretary for finance was smirking when he answered a reporter’s questions about Dr Sant’s dilemma….”

Indeed, one can imagine Ms Caruana Galizia smirking and drooling, as she thumped out this text into her PC.

In fact, the mini-converters were as Dr Sant wrote: posted by BOV not the government.

And they are powered by batteries, or should have been.

The English language instructions say clearly (but in very small type, which may explain Ms Caruana Galizia’s oversight): “Battery replacement: The converter uses 1 AG1O) (alkaline) battery.”

Unfortunately, myopia can never justify or excuse misinformed and systematic malice.

Mario Grima

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