And maybe now it’s Fiji rather than Soho. It’s been reported by The Fiji Times that a ‘Maltese businessman’ (funny how it’s always a businessman and never just a crook) has been arrested at his home in Fiji with five homemade porn films and plenty of home-brewed water of life. The newspaper reported that the Maltese businessman accepted ‘anything’ in payment for his alcohol. Hmmm. Makes you wonder. Apparently, it’s all to do with the high excise tax on legal alcohol. And so a man from Malta moved in and helped fill the gap in the market. He’s my contemporary. I wonder if it’s anyone I know?
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The billboard that former Labour deputy leader Michael Falzon said meant trouble is up in court alongside the officials who commissioned it. The prime minister testified yesterday. He explained that he felt libelled because his photograph was slap bang in the middle of that board along with a legend that shouted about corruption. He said he felt insulted, as a politician, by that accusation. As a politician? How about as Lawrence Gonzi, the man? The prime minister confirmed that he knows himself to be ultimately responsible for the behaviour of his ministers, and said that every time he received intimation of corruption, he ordered an investigation by the competent authorities.
Ah, that billboard…yet another example of Jason Micallef’s apparent policy of acting now and thinking later.
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Ah, I see that the Labour Party has brought together a number of people to draw up a code of ethics for its television, radio and newspapers – or rather, for the people who work for them. The group is led by Carmen Sammut, a redoubtable woman whose judgement I respect, and one of the few people in the country who is actually fully qualified, from an academic perspective, to do the job. The other members include Joe (Peppi) Azzopardi, an obvious sop to Joseph Muscat’s bzar fl-ghajnejn peace ‘n’ love bandwagon and one which Azzopardi shouldn’t have taken up, because you are either a current broadcaster or a person who seeks to control and regulate current broadcasters but you can’t be both. Then there’s Charles Flores, a nice enough man by all accounts, but one who was part of the Xandir Malta machine in the days of its darkest excesses. There’s Roger Mifsud, who was at The Times, and Joe Vella, who was at Union Press, about both of whom I have nothing worth saying.
The point I must make is this. Having a code of ethics is one thing. Sticking to it is quite another. A code of ethics is not a set of rules and regulations. Adherence to it is entirely optional. It should not take a code of ethics to teach grown men and women how to behave. It should be obvious to them. And if it is not obvious to them, then they are in the wrong job. Or maybe not, given that the raison d’etre of a party media machine is far different from the raison d’etre of the privately-owned media. The agenda of the latter is to make money through keeping people informed and entertained. The agenda of the former is to help the political party get elected to government. In that kind of situation, anything is grist to their mill. Any code of ethics is going to be trampled into the mud of an electoral campaign. All’s fair in love and Maltese politics.
Oh, and another thing. Joseph Muscat would do well to spare us the hypocrisy, which is already extremely tiresome after just a week. He built his political career as editor of maltastar.com, workhorse for Super One radio and television and commentator for L-orizzont. That’s hardly a stellar trajectory in the field of media ethics. If he believed in ethics, he was perfectly placed to practise them then, instead of preaching them now. Love is all you need….
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Air Malta carried just over 3,000 people back to Malta on its special-price flights, to vote in the general election. I can see Evarist Bartolo salivating already – that is, if he could be bothered to continue grinding this particular axe, given that he no longer has a personal electoral campaign to work on. They included 1,685 people brought over from the UK (one of them was his daughter who studies there) and 274 from Belgium, the new hub of Maltese expatriates.
The information was given in parliament, in reply to a question by the highly intelligent and thoroughly gelled Silvio Parnis, who has now taken a five-year break from handing out Chinese plastic roses to ladies at the school gates. I can already see the thought patterns forming here: iss hej, if it weren’t for those people, Labour would have won the election. Let’s do whatever we can to stop people voting if they don’t live here. Voting at Malta’s embassies, by post or down the Internet? You must be joking.
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The Labour Party has approved Charles Mangion as Opposition Leader. Well, I’m sorry to have to point out that it’s the head of state who approves the Opposition Leader and not the head of the party. And they didn’t even have the good grace to go through the formal channels and ask him.
It was all done to avoid having the elephant-riding Anglu Farrugia as Opposition Leader until Joseph Muscat decides to wrench himself away from whatever it is he loves doing in Brussels (writing a report, apparently). That’s the first piece of good sense I have seen manifested by the Labour Party in a long time. The last thing this country needs is a long, hot summer of Farrugia’s self-described ‘ferocious speeches’, in between bouts of riding elephants in India and reporting to the Paraventu the sale of votes by drug addicts to agents of the Nationalist Party. It’s safe to say that this kind of thing wouldn’t be great for Labour’s long-tattered image. The suggestion to have Mangion stay on in that position came from Farrugia himself, or so we were told. Perhaps he needs the time to work on those reports for the Paraventu. Perhaps he has heard of some more interesting rumours about the theft of voting documents from little old ladies and nursing mothers.
The Labour Party is now in the very interesting position of having a leader, two deputy leaders, and a leader of the opposition – proving that many heads don’t necessarily make for the equivalent number of brains.