I’m sure many of you have heard of Jack the Ripper. We are told he was believed to have been a rather respectable figure by day, but at night Jack stalked and murdered prostitutes in the East End.
Nonetheless, the identity of Jack the Ripper and his whereabouts was something the London police prayed for.
Many moons later, after Jack disappeared from the scene, we are today dragged into the breathtaking city of Hamrun. A notarial contract gets dumped at a place called Mile End, home to the great Maltese socialist party. The contract confirms that a Nationalist MP who poses as Mr Green is in fact involved in turning green pastures off the Mistra shoreline, into a dancing paradise.
Nothing wrong with that, apart from the fact that: a) the area is ODZ;
b) that the politician preaches about the need to curb development and then promotes development;
c) that Mr Green lied publicly when he stated that he knew nothing of the plan to construct a discotheque on his own land;
d) that Mr Green himself lobbied unnecessarily for this project;
e) that Mr Green makes the green credentials of his Prime Minister look very grey indeed.
The Mistra saga was only confirmed after the contract was revealed, albeit just two days before the national election. The story is now history.
What is not history is the way the guns are being trained not on Mr Green himself but the much maligned Dr Sant and of course the impertinent press.
You see, according to the high and mighty men at Auberge de Castille it is that vermin of Dr Sant who is to be blamed for telling the world what a bloody hypocrite Mr Green really was, or rather is.
We all recall Mr Green’s unbelievably militant stand when his own government wanted to locate a landfill off Mnajdra and when Mr Caqnu wanted to construct a cement factory off Siggiewi. Then we thought we had a Tarzan in our midst. In reality, all we were simply witnessing someone who wanted to take centre-stage – or to put it mildly, to find a campaign that would catapult him to stardom.
We were so green to believe that Mr Green was doing this out of his sincere passion for the environment. The only passion I have seen in Mr Green are polluting four-wheel drives and making business.
It is of course his right and everyone’s to do what one wants with their own time, money, body and soul. But then I am a journalist and Mr Green is a politician. Politicians are supposed to lead by example; a journalist’s job is to write... full stop.
Thankfully, the revelation of the contract proved what I had always said about Mr Green.
But instead of pointing their own guns on Mr Green, all guns were pointed at the ‘person’ or ‘persons’ who had the gall to leak the ‘contract’.
So all of a sudden, it was not Jack the Ripper who, with his nasty murderous habits, left his impact on Londoners, but rather the informer who cared to reveal the identity of Jack.
So someone with a very clear intention to confuse and refract all attention away from Mr Green decided to give the impression that a well known entertainment entrepreneur was at the heart of the leak to the information passed on to Labour.
An invented email was created and passed through a e-mailing list, leading to speculation and recriminations. It was of course, all untrue.
But let us for a moment stop to think.
It takes me back to the time when a security officer at the airport had decided to leak to a newspaper I ran at the time, a CCTV tape showing a Nationalist minister walk freely through customs, pick up a painting from the airport’s luggage belt in the arrivals section, and leave. Just like that. No worries, no pain.
It was 1991 and I remember the pictures were printed and after that the following happened: The Times’ and the Independent’s editors condemned the leak of the tape instead of the act itself.
And then an inquiry into the source of the leak was launched. The minister filed for libel. The courts found the minister had been libelled and awarded a walloping sum of money. The security official was demoted.
And the moral of the story is that no one even dared ask why the minister, who had no right to walk into customs and pick up a painting, was still smiling and waving his Lm2,000-plus award in his hand, and was still kept in his post.
Well like Gonzi, Eddie Fenech Adami had a way with errant politicians.
Times hardly change: in 1991 there was a Nationalist government and in 2008, whether you like it or not, we are still enjoying the taste and flavour of Nationalist governance.
Nothing has changed. Mr Green, as we all know is not Jack the Ripper. He is leagues better than Jack the Ripper, but he has the gall to walk straight, look people in the eyes and imagine that he is not at fault.
And the worst thing about it is that his party, in its usually smug way, has the knack of turning things round and make people like Mr Green look like the victim, when they should have stepped down and returned to their old job of plucking out molars and polishing incisors.
Schulz, leave us alone
Schulz is the name of a pet goldfish I once had. It also reminds me of Hogan’s heroes and Captain Schulz.
But my goldfish Schulz was also very red and not particularly bright. So when I heard about Mr Schulz coming to Malta, I remembered of when he was rudely lampooned as ‘kapo’, a German concentration camp guard in the European Parliament, where is the chairman of the Party of European Socialists there.
The decision by Schulz to give his backing to Joseph Muscat and to state he was the right man for the top job is a horrendous example of what should never happen. If no one told Schulz then I will have to tell him: “who the flying f*** do you think you are, Schulz?”
The last time the Germans tried their hand at colonisation, they made a bloody mess. And I mean this literally.
Telling Maltese Labourites who is their best choice smacks of arrogance and sounds patronising. Schulz should have known better. Now he cannot be taken seriously for a minute. As head of the European socialists, he should have kept his big fat mouth shut.
He should have not taken sides, and realised that his endorsement of Muscat does not mean he knows anything about the other candidates. If Schulz had any decency, he should apologise.
Just imagine: Joseph Muscat landed in Germany, went up to the social democratic convention, and out of the blue he declared his preference for a 34-year-old redhead with a goatee.
Well, if the Germans are willing to sit down and obey political directions from a Maltese from Burmarrad called Joseph Muscat, then so be it. But here in Malta, we tend to look at things in a different way. And thank God for that.
And it is of course rather funny to see Schulz lend his public support to an MLP upstart. For one, Schulz cannot remember that years back when both Schulz and I were still able to dance all night long, the appearance of a foreign politician in Malta would have led the Malta police to escort him out of the country.
The Labour government of Mr Mintoff, and the party which harboured many of the cronies that still oscillate in the Labour party, had introduced the infamous Foreign Interference Act. It meant that if a foreigner decided to open his or her mouth in the same way Mr Schulz pronounced himself, there was very good chance of being criminally prosecuted.
Well done Mr Schulz, well done and next time you do come to Malta, please let us know who is the next leader of the European socialist parties, and whether you as head of the European socialists have publicly supported his candidature.
Hallina Schulz!
Hara-kiri at Mile End
If the Labour party were looking for the proverbial final nail in the coffin, it’s the report issued to all executive members and its frank assessment of the MLP and its officials.
There can be no better way to fill up a newspaper. There is no better way to make a journalist happy.
But if anyone had any sense in the MLP, this report is pure, unadulterated sadomaso literature. Really, there is enough stuff in this report to keep Lawrence Gonzi in power until his teeth fall out and his hair turns white, and Gordon Pisani starts looking like Faust.
No one in the Labour party is thinking. If anyone expects Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi and Jason Micallef to stay on in the party after this report, they must be really dreaming.
The 99-page report published in toto in sister newspaper Illum makes you want to cry. Really, you really want to take a pillow and suffocate yourself. It is like being taken to Republic Street naked and then asked to kneel down on shards of glass. It’s that bad.
And if for anyone in the Labour party really thinks that the publication of this report will help, they must be out of their minds. The only people who are spluttering with joy and thankful for this naivety are the journalists and the Nationalist party. The former because it is their job to uncover the truth, and the latter because their dream of being in power forever is slowly becoming more of a reality than a simple dream.
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Disclaimer: If anyone is asking if Mr Green is Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, then please do not ask. If JPO is offended by the truth, then he should do the honourable thing and leave politics.
In no way does this article have any reflection on JPO’s dental vocation and work ethic.
On the sombre note of Schulz: if Mr Schulz is offended by some of the descriptions used in this column I must ask him to grow up and come to terms that here in Malta we also have a free press.
And apologies to everyone for not having had the chance to write about how the journalists at Girgenti were allowed to watch the Eurovision in the presence of a bubbly PM.
And finally sincere apologies to all my readers for not explaining why George Pullicino, as fisheries minister, is such a good friend to il-poodle. No not Joseph Muscat, but Charles Azzopardi of Azzopardi fisheries. Apologies once again for not having expanded on this subject of friendship. Friendship is such a special thing, isn’t it?
