Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco continues to cling on, fighting to delay or derail the impeachment process with one tactic after another. The only appropriate way in which to avoid impeachment at this stage is to resign. But Judge Farrugia Sacco clearly fails to understand that his current behaviour only proves the point made by many that he is unfit for the post, and not just because he refused to stay out of the Malta Olympic Committee, which is now almost a side-issue at this stage. That is the irony. The more he tries to prove that he is in the right and justified in his behaviour, the further he goes towards proving how unfit he is to be a judge. The fact that he is embarrassing himself is quite irrelevant. But he really is an embarrassment to his position.
Yesterday there was a report in the press with details of his testimony before the Commission for the Administration of Justice. He said in that forum that he believes he has been punished enough already because, he claims, he was given a much heavier workload deliberately (well, now he has no workload at all, so he can’t complain), and barred from hearing Constitutional cases (as well he should have been). Oh, and he was also, he said to the Commission, excluded from “trips abroad. My, how very Maltese: any trip ‘abroad’ is covetable and seen as a holiday, even when it is work. And this is a judge in his 60s.
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Just over a year ago, the predominant sound in Malta was that of tens of thousands of people, drunk on Koolaid, shouting about living in a dictatorship. How stupid they now seem – well, they looked stupid then, but you were not allowed to say so without getting lynched by the I’m In zombies. It’s a good thing few of them bother with the news, especially when it is about foreign parts, because then they would not only look stupid but also feel it.
It’s all about Ukraine right now, where the people want closer ties with the European Union but their ‘democratically elected’ leader and a minority of Ukrainians want closer ties with Russia. The trouble erupted 12 weeks ago when the Ukrainian president reneged on plans for an agreement with the European Union in favour of support from Vladimir Putin.
Since then there have been massive demonstrations and fighting in the streets every day, with protestors ‘disappearing’, being savagely beaten by the police, and the people’s demands ignored outright. When the whole thing began, Viktor Yanukovych, the president at the centre of the entire storm, was due to fly to Malta to visit and be decorated by our president, but he thought it best to take a rain-check, given the circumstances.
Yesterday was the worst day of violence since the demonstrations began, with protestors hurling petrol bombs, fireworks and stones at the riot police who are now the only publicly visible representatives of the state. Nine people died in the violence.
What sheltered lives so many of our foolish compatriots live, that they actually thought (because they were told) that the comfortable life they lived until last year in an easy-going democracy was a dictatorship experience. If they had the insight of intelligence, they would be embarrassed, but as with Judge Farrugia Sacco, they are shielded from introspection.
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Footage of the meet-and-greet sessions at the next EU summit should prove interesting. The new Italian prime minister, if his government lasts that long, will be fascinating the room and moving through it with ease, while our prime minister, nose seriously out of joint at this 39-year-old incursor with more personality and hair (and a G7 economy to pilot, rather than two tiny islands) does his usual ‘isolated kid in the playground’ impression with occasional shows of bravado involving, with luck, David Cameron.
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This newspaper broke the news, a couple of days ago, that the hotel industry will be left without EU funds this year because the government did not understand the EU-approval process or how much time it takes. Well, that’s what happens when you use public positions as a reward system for the party faithful and for the members of parliament you think should be kept happy. The prime minister chose, as the parliamentary secretary responsible for the administration of EU funds, a brand-new MP who had just turned 27 a couple of weeks before and who had not even graduated from university. He was still a law student at the time of his appointment. This was unbelievably irresponsible, but because even the electorate sees these posts as a sort of reward system, rather than jobs with a lot of responsibility attached which should be done by those who are capable so that there isn’t a disastrous knock-on effect, there were no howls of protest. And now look what’s happened. Perhaps the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association would like to release a press statement about this? Or are they feeling a little awkward about being so positive – fashionable word – about Labour?
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