So The Times, in its lackadaisical, skewed reporting yesterday led with the header: No criminal case against JPO.
What criminal case? I asked.
Later in the day, JPO, the disgraced Nationalist MP who hangs on to his seat even though most Nationalists would love to see him go, issued a press release singing ‘vindication’.
Why he should seek to sing glory beats me. Most of us have for the love of God forgotten the farcical times before the last election. But just in case anyone needs any reminding, the story goes like this.
In the last minutes of the campaign back in March, the Labour leader stated that a development for an open-air discotheque in Mistra had been issued over protected land, describing it as ‘corruption’.
Gonzi, in his typical holier than thou attitude, accused Sant of mudslinging and then asked the Commissioner of Police to investigate. Poor Mr John Rizzo was once again forced to spend more of his precious time on investigations that would lead to the scoring of political points.
What we did get to know then, is that the land adjacent to Mistra Bay is owned by Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, the man who has portrayed himself as Malta’s Green champion.
What we did not know is that he had hoped to lease/rent out the land to third parties for development purposes. When faced with questions about his own land, JPO surprisingly (or shall we say stupidly) suggested that he did not know what was happening.
Later, and when it was too late for anyone to notice in the election campaign and just before election day, JPO’s direct involvement in the contract which basically leases/rents out this land to an entertainment guy, was revealed to the press by the sloth-like Labour PR machine.
In other words, it was proven beyond any doubt that JPO had lied.
Lying in public to the media is not a criminal offence. If that is not tantamount to becoming a political liability, then what is?
In yesterday’s statement JPO had this to say: “… over the past three and a half months [my words] have been twisted beyond recognition and blown out of proportion.
“Quotations of what I am supposed to have said have, over this period, been circulating from one media spot to another, interpreted and reinterpreted and have reached the general public, in many distorted ways and forms.”
Now either JPO takes us for fools or better still, thinks that we have lost our memory. We should perhaps refresh his feeble memory.
He said that he did not know anything about the project. It is of course unthinkable how someone can organise a mega project on your land without one’s knowledge and more so get involved with MEPA without the knowledge and consent of the owner.
It is of course only possible if you happen to be on some kind of Amazonian ecstasy cocktail, but then I am very sure that JPO is as straight as they can get when it comes to tropical rainforest drugs.
JPO really and truly reminds me of Jason Micallef: the two are in the same league of absolute denial. The two seem to be oblivious to the message trumpeted every second over the airwaves, calling on them to leave and never come back.

But back to JPO. The police have found enough evidence to take steps against three officials. One is from the MTA, another a private architect who was appointed by good George Pullicino on MEPA as DCC chairman, and another little known official on MEPA also approved by Mr Pullicino.
The three officials will obviously have much to recount in court and one hopes they will shed light on why, if they did, act in any foolish way.
Surely they did not act, if they allegedly so did, just because they wanted to see Mistra raped or destroyed.
To destroy Mistra, they need not have waited for JPO’s entrepreneurial spirit to surface. They should have only noted what MEPA has allowed to happen in Mistra, first with the catering development bang in the middle of the valley, then for a massive construction on the promontory and at the small fort off Mistra which is acting as work-station for an ill-kept fish-farming company.
Mistra is in real terms already quite ugly. So JPO probably said to himself that it would not be a bad idea if he made it even more ‘ugly’ and make a buck or two out of his uglification business dream.
But JPO thinks that he can get away with his political irresponsibility. And this is the point.
JPO’s statement can of course be read in toto on The Times website or any of the friendly press websites. It makes interesting reading and it avoids the main issues:
1) Namely that Mistra is an outside development zone and should not have been granted a permit. But then we all know how serious MEPA is turning out to be.
2) Notably that JPO with his so called environmental credentials should have known better and should have kept himself busy pulling out molars instead of involving himself in speculation.
3) Most significantly that JPO lied when he said that he did not know what was to happen on his land at Mistra.
4) Unforgettably, he could have lost the PN the last election.

But now back to the politically appointed architect Philip Azzopardi, who is being charged criminally in relation to some wrongdoing at Mistra. Azzopardi, a former DCC chairman, some time back was singled out in a story in MaltaToday and once again, as is the case with many of our stories, the guns of retribution were set against MaltaToday.
Then MaltaToday had reported: “Sliema house collapse architect appointed DCC chairman”.
Azzopardi was sued by the relatives of 84-year-old Rita Vella who was buried alive at her home back in 2000 when a neighbouring house under Azzopardi’s supervision collapsed. His appointment to DCC chairman came six months after he was first appointed a member on the DCC, the decision-making body on development applications.
Azzopardi and contractors Raymond Micallef and Raymond Calleja were sued by the relatives of Rita Vella. The Vellas claim Azzopardi and the contractors were liable towards them in damages because the collapse of the house and the death of Rita Vella had occurred as a result of negligence on their part.
They also added that the accident had occurred because no suitable safety measures had been adopted, allowing the situation to deteriorate seriously.
Now I can recall clearly, how George Pullicino, then minister responsible for MEPA but now demoted to a waste minister, rapped me on the knuckles for having even allowed such an article to appear.
Of course, it was not only Pullicino who reacted. The former President of the Kamra tal-Periti also took offence to the story. You see, associations of professionals act very much in the same way union chiefs Gejtu Vella and Tony Zarb react when their members feel all jittery and uncomfortable.
The Mistra affair also goes to show, thanks to the police investigation, how ‘correct’ people are in doubting the seriousness of MEPA. Of course after all these investigations, one should not expect Lawrence Gonzi to take any dramatic or drastic decisions. Gonzi, like Joseph Muscat, believes in destiny and that destiny alone should decide one’s future, including that of the individuals who are expected resign.

Which takes me to Joseph Muscat and Jason Micallef.
Micallef like JPO, cannot see the writing on the wall. If there was a secretary-general that surely does not need to be shown to the door, it must be Micallef. His next step is obviously quite clear to the 400,000 odd Maltese citizens, but not to him.
He should leave, but he opts to stay.
And yet what is surprising is that he still believes that he can hold on to the job. And what is sadder is that Joseph Muscat, very much in the same vein as Gonzi on JPO, who refuses to take action on JPO, Muscat patiently waits for the next conference for the delegates to do the dirty work for him.
Which obviously dampens Joseph Muscat’s big bang start which was further dampened with the election of two Prescotts instead of one, for the Labour deputy leadership.
Toni Abela and Anglu Farrugia are the two new deputy leaders. The former I know far too well to pass any disapproving comments. He is more politically astute and prepared than all three political leaders, but like the author of this opinion, he can be impulsive and brash.
Politics is a different job to journalism and he will have to bite his tongue on more than one occasion if he wants to keep away from trouble. Yet Toni Abela should not be underestimated. He is perfectly placed to rally the militant Labourite, and with a soft spoken and young Muscat, that will be needed.
But did the MLP need two rabble-rousers?
Which is why Anglu Farrugia’s election to the post raises the question of whether his role will be duplicated by Toni or simply replicated. Farrugia like Toni is no fool, but he will have to learn how to think before talking and that, I am afraid, is not always easy.
Good, young Joseph Muscat also has a lot to learn. The first step he should take is to shoot or catapult into space the photographer who froze images of the three leaders on celluloid when visiting Gozo yesterday.
I am replicating one photograph sent to this newspaper by the Labour PR machine – which is obviously still vacillating somewhere in moo-moo land, unable to even filter through those photos and eschew anything that makes its leaders look like country bumpkins.
But then again, this new wave of politicians may well be so laid back and easy going that I can very well understand why Joseph Muscat has decided to publicly state that he loves everyone. “Inhobbkom”, the goateed 34-year-old exclaimed in pure Christian televangelist glory as if he was proposing eternal salvation itself to his audience.
Perhaps someone should whisper into his ears that politics is everything but love, indeed it is the precise opposite.

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