OPINION | Sunday, 15 July 2007

Pardon me, did you say Presidential Pardon?

In the interview with Jesmond Mugliett, I tried very hard to be sober.
I cannot say I agreed with all of his answers, but credit where credit’s due. He did the honourable thing and tried to resign. I guess all our ministers are deep-rooted cradle Catholics, confessing their sins and accepting their penitence before creeping back to their self-indulgent lives.
If I were Jesmond Mugliett I would have not allowed the PM to wait about for 24 hours before coming to a decision. I would have simply informed him that the decision was final, boarded on my boat and off I go.
Leaving politics has become more difficult than leaving a wife, a job or abandoning a delicious plate of freshly caught sea clams drowning in lemon, parsley and pepper.
If Jesmond Mugliett will recover from this bad bout of ministerial interference, I cannot really say. Only time will tell what might happen to Jesmond Mugliett’s political future.
Neither is it clear whether the Prime Minister will manage to regain the mileage lost off this episode. In a week where Mater Dei and the Euro should have rocketed him to new highs, the Mugliett mess has dragged them all down to third division.
This is a news story re-confirming Gonzi’s trivial pursuit, upholding wrong decisions at the wrong time.
In the last few days I have encountered Ministers, politicians, party animals and political pundits and none of them, with the exception of one hard working but naïve individual, has supported the PM’s decision.
Even the inner-circle at Stamperija are saddened with the PM’s decision. And yet I hear the Prime Minister is so sure of himself and his decision, no one can point out the error of his ways.

It had to be the presidential pardon and the conflicting statements by Selvaggi and Gerada that led Mugliett into this spiral of despair. Gerada, a political appointee and a well established businessman, once shared a Maltacom directorship with Mugliett (then a PN candidate) and was definitely the one who should have tendered his resignation.
In a decent world, if the Minister resigns, so do the people who have been appointed by him.
In the real world, political appointees who contradict their minister leave and do not hang about for long.
That Mugliett allows Gerada to stay means one of four things:

1. Mugliett is a nice guy
2. Gerada is a super chairman
3. Mugliett is indecisive
4. Mugliett still has a lot of thinking to do

Gerada and Selvaggi have both reported the Minister as saying that the two men who men convicted should not be sacked until the President decides the request on a presidential pardon.
Well, the rest is history. Selvaggi is out of the picture but Gerada is still clinging on.
Another guy still around is Jason Azzopardi, the Nationalist MP who has a set up what he calls “office sharing” with another lawyer, defending the two individuals during the Appeals process, but who argues that he did not sign the letter requesting the presidential pardon. It was his office sharing colleague instead.
No problems Jason, we understand that when it comes to sharing responsibilities (rather than offices) it’s a completely different ball game.
Of course this is all rather irrelevant because we already know that Jason Azzopardi was in on what his colleague was up to writing to the President.
However, unknown to many, is the fact that the cabinet led by Dr Gonzi offers its suggestions and waves the green flag to the President if it agrees with a presidential pardon. I can also throw a spanner in the works and stop the process cold.
So there you are. The Presidential pardon will, if I am not mistaken, end up once again with Jesmond Mugliett and Lawrence Gonzi.
If this is going to be the case, I very much hope that, like those MEPA board members who walk out when one of their clients appears with a mega project, the cabinet minister and the Prime Minister will walk out and leave it for the others to decide.
This is of course a utopian fancy of how everyone imagines the cabinet to work. But the decent world and the real world are, as ever, worlds apart.

I recall an episode in my life when I once served as deputy to an editor. The man still hangs around and still serves as editor. I’d penned a piece about Fort Chambray and all the people involved in the deal, allegedly linked with the Italian businessmen who later turned out to be a crook.
Well, to cut a long story short, I wrote a piece that made a passing remark about Richard Cachia Caruana. The editor chose to plonk my story on the front page.
The next day, to my great surprise, I picked up the paper from the newsstand only to read a scathing editorial by the same editor. It was head-to-head against the same article he as editor had decided to plaster on the front page. For a header it read “Virginal Politics” and was intended to ridicule the article that appeared in the same newspaper he edited; my own.
I was so angry I could hardly wait to face the man and all I remember is that I jumped into my car and raced down from Naxxar to the offices in San Gwann in record time. And there to my great surprise I found that same editor then a priest, talking to Richard Cachia Caruana.
It was one of those scathing events that reveal the ugliness and disloyalty of editors. It also catalysed my desire to leave the paper I worked for and get back to running my own newspaper, as I had done before.
Yet it also raises the point of how easily journalists can make mistakes and the consequences when they do.
The story on Chambray was full of tortuous insinuations and intrigue, but it was near impossible to confirm most links and allegations.
When journalists make mistakes, as is the case in faulty reporting, a failure to get both sides of the story, endlessly repeated spin or simple lying, it is the editor who has to take the can.
The sad thing about journalism is that there is no one training young graduates to be reporters and journalists, the Communications Department at University is distant and detached from the media in Malta and it has never attempted to link up with editors and veteran journalists, something routine in most modern universities and dynamic media organisations. Most Maltese Communications graduates are simply not made to operate in a newsroom and have little practical understanding of how the media works.
I would venture to add that the old Maltese malaise that “this is my department and no tells me how to run it” has crippled the Communications department for years and no one seems bothered to do a thing about it.

And before I’m off, a quick question about Astrid Vella and Jesmond Mugliett. What got into Astrid Vella to accept to act a broker between a Nationalist minister and The Times. At least that is what The Times said.
Has Missus Vella changed her motto from Save the world to Save the minister.
As my great aunt would always preach, don’t ask a gardener to fix your plumbing and don’t ask a person to be what he or she cannot be.

And one final parting shot; I was drawing up an advert and I was warned that I could not advertise a vacancy for a handyman, it had to be for a handyperson. Yes you heard right handyperson.
You see if I mention handyman Gender police woman Sina Bugeja will pounce on me (metaphorically) with her big scissors and separate my genitalia from my torso (what I mean to say, is my testicles from my hairy body).
I guess, she has got to be tough, but if that is the case then why does she tolerate Dr Muscat the abrasive boss of the far-right to ridicule a journalist on Smash TV and tell the world he did not know the gender of the journalist!