On one and the same day this week, two massive caches of conversations were released to the public.
In one the adult film star (what we could call porn star) Stormy Daniels sent a judge the extensive correspondence dating back to 2018 with the lawyer representing Donald Trump, Joe Tacopina, concerning alleged hush money paid to cover up alleged sex relationships with the former US President.
The US public took this development in its stride, despite the seriousness of the case, without any hang-ups or qualms about the privacy of correspondence or claims of misogyny.
Here in Malta the release of WhatsApp chats between MP Rosianne Cutajar and Yorgen Fenech caused a veritable revolution. For days and days people talked of nothing else. There were people who remained awake till 5am and did not even cover half of the 2,200 messages.
People argued about the moral implications of this invasion of privacy while the police were ordered to arraign Mark Camilleri, who somehow was involved in the release of the cache but meanwhile he (Camilleri) moved abroad.
Many lapped up the tawdry messages between the two protagonists, she an ambitious MP who wanted to be made a minister and he the man being investigated regarding the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia and who was high in one of the foremost private companies in Malta.
The messages show her barefaced offering her political support, which she did up to the level of the Council of Europe where she was sent to represent Malta.
But the messages reveal much more. They reveal the inner workings of what was described by the former minister of finance Edward Scicluna (who was out of the charmed circle himself) as Joe Muscat’s “kitchen Cabinet”. Most of the Cabinet was out of the kitchen cabinet, yet still voted in favour.
The inner core dispensed with legality. All it seemed to concern itself with was accumulating jobs and appointments on top of each other. It became a huge ATM doling out massive amounts of money.
That, and the callous way in which it was described, shocked people, including the Labour masses who were not taken in by the pleas of misogyny. (Why did these people remain silent when Daphne Caruana Galizia was hounded and ultimately killed?)
From the Rosianne cache we know how decisions were made in the Joseph Muscat administration and it explains how many bad decisions were taken which are now being condemned not just by a dormant Opposition but also by the few institutions not yet taken in by the spin.
And there may even be more, which many people do not seem to have thought of.
Where did the cache come from? I think we may exclude Rosianne herself or Yorgen. Who would have access to the exchange? Either they dropped from heaven or the exchange was hacked. Or else the cache is part of a far wider cache from one of the phones in question, either Rosianne’s or Yorgen’s.
This could have come, conceivably, from a mobile phone company....or from the police authorities. We have not heard of any investigation in the police ranks. There may be other operators in the area, such as, and not exclusively, the secret service.
And this is where the perniciousness of the whole thing hits us. The Rosianne – Yorgen exchanges form only a part of the exchanges on those phones. There must be other tracks.
Whoever unleashed the Rosianne-Yorgen tracks must have other tracks in standby. Such as Rosianne/Yorgen messages with Joseph Muscat. Or with Keith Schembri, who lost his phone.
This seam is huge and open to further mischief. No wonder Robert Abela, who finds it impossible to order a proper investigation about the deaths in construction accidents, suddenly found his voice and the police found themselves urged to seek Marc Camilleri.
“They seek him here
They seek him there,
Where is the Scarlet Pimpernel?”
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