Hello, is there anyone out there? With our front-page stories today, I wonder if anyone has any control at all over what is happening in this country. It is said that one can sort of guess what this opinion column is going to be all about. Well, if that is the case, then someone should really have written this one for me. Today, I had planned to write about youngsters and spare time. But with Tonio Fenech confirming that he went to see a football match on George Fenech’s private jet with Joe Gasan et al, it seems that I might have a feast on Saturday afternoon.
I was also going to write about Superintendent Sharon Tanti, Inspector Bernard Spiteri and his army of police officers... but I will start with Tonio.
Now Tonio has told us that he informed the Prime Minister that he was going on a trip with Joe G. to watch a soccer match in the UK. And Lawrence told him, “No problem, Tonio, go ahead!”
Well, no problem indeed. Now let us imagine for a minute that it was not Tonio Fenech, but the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer we were talking about here. Off goes Alistair Darling to Barcelona on the private jet of billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, together with that other billionaire, Roman Abramovich, to watch a Chelsea soccer game. Hint, hint. Well, the broadsheets, the tabloids and BBC would have such a field day and I have no doubt that Darling would resign before even flying back to the UK... apart from taking his garden gnome and smashing it to smithereens onto his thick head.
Tonio was screaming his head off yesterday when accused of a ‘conflict’ by Franco Debono. Why? Is there something we do not know?
What we do know is that George Fenech et al would very much like the Dragonara Casino in their hands, and guess what? Tonio Fenech is being seen as a wee bit too accommodating by his colleagues – as we saw last Monday during that PBS show presented by that host who sent us into fits of laughter with his ridiculous 1930s’ fascist era hairstyle.
Well, George Fenech has every right to support good hardcore journalism, and his business support for ‘the Tumas Fenech foundation for education in journalism’ is one good reason, I am sure – he adores these sort of opinion articles. More importantly, I really think he believes I am a great guy!
Tonio Fenech is in the real shits. Now shit is a slang word used freely by high, middle and lower class people in modern English to describe ‘a situation’. Shit, as we all know, is the vulgar word for faeces; and if the shit has ever hit the fan, well dear Tonio, today has just turned into a faecal storm.
But let us not for a moment be led to believe that Mr Fenech is in any way going to resign. As Franco Debono accused Tonio Fenech of having a ‘conflict’, the Prime Minister looked on and said nothing. Nothing as in ‘niente’, ‘xejn’, ‘rien’ and all the other words to illustrate someone who is lost for words. Well, if he found nothing wrong with Tonio’s high-altitude frolicking with big business, we should not expect Tonio to abandon ship and leave suddenly. Good politicians in their late-30s do not leave politics just like that.
Well, everything seems to be falling into place. When three backbenchers met on Monday evening in front of the PBS cameras with the blessing of Joe Pirotta and Claire Vassallo Thake – the woman who believes she is going to change the face of public broadcasting – the name of the game was “rout out the bastards”.
There, in the line of fire, sat Franco Debono, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and Robert Arrigo. And instead of being singled out by the man with the funniest hairstyle in Malta, they offered a wall of resistance that put to shame all the machinations of the boys and girls from Castille.
We may dislike or disagree with the three backbenchers, but whether we like it or not, they were elected democratically, and when asked by their coach to play the game, they did.
Two of them did so in rather unexpected ways. JPO and Robert Arrigo scored goals in both their constituencies, and had it not been for them their coach would probably not even be where he is today.
Now all of a sudden, the man with the hilarious hairstyle is suggesting that they are all after ministerial posts, and the fact that they are not ministers is the reason for their discontent.
I have yet to meet a soccer player who enters professional football with the dream of spending the rest of his life in the reserve team. I have still to meet one soccer player who would not like to be with the first 11.
But then I guess, the man with the most ridiculous hairstyle north of Tripoli thinks differently, which I guess is what the men in Castille think, too. And of course, none of the press (not even PBS), dared raise the question of the ‘revolt’ in the backbenches.
But back to Tonio, the jet-setter. Tonio sees nothing wrong with flying on a private jet owned by Mr George Fenech. Nor does he see anything wrong with sharing some headroom with Joe Gasan and smiling and laughing with him at a football match.
Which is why, I guess, the government gets all ‘principled’ about the fact that a judge and a magistrate can head an Olympic committee or a basketball organisation. That, you see, is a ‘conflict’.
What applies to magistrates and judges and other individuals does not necessarily apply to politicians, especially if the politician is the Minister of Finance with the looks of a virgin, thanks to the influence of his well-mannered and unassuming spokesman, Alan Caruana.
Yet nothing beats the manners we encounter when we deal with the Maltese police: especially under the captaincy of that wonderful Superintendent, the one and only Sharon Tanti. As you will read in today’s MaltaToday; you had better pray to the Lord that you do not have a citation arriving at the wrong address. You had better say your prayers and hope that you never meet a policeman from St Julian’s, because it is very likely that you will be regaled with a Bruce Willis session, and be arrested and treated like a murderer, a drug baron and a rapist.
I love the Maltese police; more so now, when they have no one to lead them. The Commissioner is hardly ever to be seen and the Minister responsible for the Police Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici is either in hibernation or in another world.
Superintendent Sharon Tanti finds the time to direct all her energies to arrest a woman who was supposed to have received a citation and appear in court. But this is not the point. This excessive use of police force is an indictment on Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici who is proving to all of us that he is not only incompetent, but really and truly a waste of space.
Harsh words indeed, but if he wants to prove otherwise he is more than welcome to come back and show us if he really does exist.
If this were a bigger country with high hills and forgotten valleys and meadows, the police would act like Chechen Russian militia, take us away and deal with us accordingly. Some police officers think that they can do what the f*** they like and they are being allowed to do this because their minister does not know what his obligations are all about.
The opposition led by Joseph Muscat is surprisingly mum when it comes to police matters. To Muscat the 1,000 or more votes in the police force are more important than all the concerns about police misconduct and inappropriate misbehaviour.
When I think of all the crime taking place in St Julian’s district, I ask myself: does this Sharon Tanti really believe that her high handedness is justified?
We are back to Mintoffian times when the police did as they pleased. Who is to blame for this state of affairs? The politician who decided to wash his hands like Pontius Pilate did two thousand years ago.
It is a pity, considering that we had all thought that this young man had the right ingredients for being a good politician. Instead, he allows the police to act like unwired robots, more interested in showing dishing out brute force to the weak and small than with the really problematic issues.
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Today, I had planned to write about youngsters and spare time. But with Tonio Fenech confirming that he went to see a football match on George Fenech’s private jet with Joe Gasan et al, it seems that I might have a feast on Saturday afternoon.
