NEWS | Wednesday, 04 March 2009

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Matthew Vella
Lawrence Gonzi is going to need more than an army of columnists to stop Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando from upstaging his government.
Cast out of the Nationalist paradise for his involvement in the scandalous Mistra land deal, Pullicino Orlando is now upsetting Gonzi’s kingdom. His missive on immigration, in which he revealed a hardline stance on illegal immigration just days after the Opposition leader stoked the fires on the issue, provoked a reaction from no less than two PN apologists.
Ranier Fsadni, the chairman of the AZAD think-tank called it the “pariah strategy” to immigration, a term that said more about Pullicino Orlando’s status in the party than about his ramblings on immigration.
Georg Sapiano, the Nationalist candidate, was more forthright in showing that ‘Jay’ (a mock reference to the acronym JPO) was being reeled in by Labour leader Joseph Muscat: “…his posturing over St John’s and his suggested treatment of illegal immigrants goes against the basic values of the party he chose to represent in the general election.”
In a nutshell, Jeffrey could be done for. After nearly losing the election for the Nationalists over the Mistra fracas, his fall from grace has now turned him into a Picaresque villain: opportunist and lascivious to the extent of being ready to hurt his party where it matters.
First there was his opposition to the extension of the St John’s Co-Cathedral museum, made all the more controversial for two factors: €14 million in European Union funds dispensed by the Office of the Prime Minister; and Richard Cachia Caruana, the plenipotentiary seer who sits on the cathedral’s foundation, and the man whom Pullicino Orlando suspects has manoeuvred his downfall.
Now he has turned to immigration, with a stance that flushed his liberal pretentions down the drain. “Send them back,” he wrote in The Times the Monday after Joseph Muscat challenged Gonzi to a debate in parliament on immigration. “When the weather is fair and at the earliest opportunity they should be towed back into international water…”
Fsadni hit out at Pullicino Orlando’s disregard for international law, saying it was the kind of strategy that would turn Malta into a pariah state, not to mention suspension from the EU. “His attempt to save us from rising xenophobia sounds rather like the attempt by US generals to save Vietnamese villages from communism: to save the village… it was necessary to destroy it.”
But it was Sapiano’s ire that was the verbal dressing-down of Pullicino Orlando. “Had he not contested the PN ticket he would have obtained just a tiny fraction of the votes he did,” referring to his election from both his constituencies last March, in the midst of the Mistra scandal.
Had it not been for the PN’s constant backing, deceptive though it was, Pullicino Orlando faced annihilation. But it is true that the PN had no choice: isolate Jeffrey and hand the election to Labour on a silver plate; or brave the barrage, and the latter did pay.
“So he sits in Parliament as a member of the party first and foremost. If he cannot behave like one, he is a greater threat to the country’s stability than Muscat. The quicker Pullicino Orlando understands that, the better,” Sapiano crowed last Sunday.
It’s not a statement to be taken lightly. In the Nationalist lore, few other people inspired the horror that Alfred Sant provoked in them. If you are more disliked than the Opposition leader, Pullicino Orlando then is really persona non gratae at Pietà.
The question is, where will Jeffrey strike next?

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