This week, in one and the same week, three illustrious has-beens lost their heads.
As Giulio Andreotti said, or more exactly would have said, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely – especially if it’s lost.
We had Donald Trump losing it, then we had Boris Johnson losing his after he was made to resign from an MP and lastly we had Joey Muscat gloriously losing it over a woman magistrate.
All three had lost power and all three then proceeded to lose their heads.
Trump has been criminally charged by federal prosecutors in Florida with mishandling classified documents. He has pleaded not guilty. He was arraigned earlier this week.
Meanwhile a federal judge has set a date for a second defamation trial brought by E Jean Carroll, the New York writer who last month won a $5m jury verdict against Trump for sexual abuse and defamation.
Now the reverberations – Fox News displayed on Tuesday an on-screen banner, known as a chyron, that called Joe Biden a “wannabe dictator” presumably for wanting to send his predecessor to prison. This was quickly removed.
Next to the UK and Boris Johnson. Conservative MPs will vote tomorrow (Monday) in a free vote on the privileges committee’s report on Boris Johnson.
The former prime minister has been found guilty of lying to Parliament. Before this, at the end of last week, Johnson wrote his resignation letter, described as “a howling and at times hilarious rebuttal of the lying he was about to be found guilty of”.
Johnson ranted about anything and everything – he attacked the personal probity of Harriet Harman, committee chair, apart from Johnson’s long history of lying, so ceaseless, so well documented.
He threw an extraordinary tantrum. His three years in power are being presented as an aberration, the product of a politician uniquely unsuited to rule. It is now time to “move on”, it’s being said, but it’s still difficult to see how this can be done without bringing Brexit into question.
On Thursday, flanked by his security and his lawyer, Joseph Muscat strode down Republic Street on his way to court. He told the court that the magistrate investigating the controversial hospitals deal “sided” with her father and brother, breached his (Muscat’s) rights and was prejudicing his case.
When the magistrate in question, Gabriella Vella, rejected his request for her to step aside, Muscat asked the court to order the magistrate’s recusal. There the matter stands so far.
In his interview with Manwel Cuschieri, Muscat described the magisterial inquiry as a “dirty game”.
He threatened to sue “those who have fomented it”. He also implied that his detractors were “freemasons”, well connected to members of the judiciary (forgetting the judiciary is stuffed with his own political appointees).
It is now up to the people of the United States to show how justice can triumph over this version of a kangaroo court. Not easy. It is now up to the British Conservative Party to show it can shake off the hold that Boris Johnson and Brexit still have over the party. Not easy.
And in Malta it is up to the Court and the people to detoxify themselves from the failed dreams of Muscat-economics.
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