A BAREFACED LIE

On TVAM this morning, Mr Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando asserted that I am an acolyte of Mr Richard Cachia Caruana and that I form part of a clique orchestrated by Mr Cachia Caruana to perform character assassinations on persons targeted by Mr Cachia Caruana. Mr Pullicino Orlando went on to assert that I am controlled by Mr Cachia Caruana.

These are a barefaced lie.

I invite Mr Pullicino Orlando to sue me for defaming his good name by stating this. If he does not, then my readers are free to draw their own inferences.

Just so that Mr Pullicino Orlando might give himself pause for thought, and perhaps apologise for his scurrilous remarks in my regard, since even before the 2008 elections, I have met Mr Cachia Caruana perhaps four or five times in a social context (if that), have had perhaps three conversations over the phone (if that) and exchanged maybe one or two emails, if at all.

Perhaps Mr Pullicino Orlando thinks that Mr Cachia Caruana exercises control over me by sending voices into my head. I do not hear voices in my head, so that theory can be discounted. Neither do furtive messengers slink up to me in the dark of the night to whisper Mr Cachia Caruana's instructions into my ear while I am asleep.

In any event, considering I write one print column and an average of three blogs, to an average total of, say, around two thousand words, per week, given the contact we have had, it is more than slightly ridiculous to say what Mr Pullicino Orlando said.

Maybe Mr Pullicino Orlando thinks that the control over me to which he referred is exercised at one remove, when the "clique" meets to co-ordinate our output for the week ahead. This might well be the case, except for one fatal flaw: other than in Mr Pullicino Orlando's head, no such "clique" exists.

I have met Fr Joe Borg perhaps once over the last four years or so, though I certainly couldn't say when or where, for all that I know that our conversation, such as it was, would not have been about Mr Pullicino Orlando or about what Mr Cachia Caruana was telling us to write. Did you understand that, Mr Pullicino Orlando?

Likewise Mrs Caruana Galizia who I meet very infrequently: I have never discussed what I intend to write with her, I have never transmitted instructions to her about what she should write and I have never received instructions about what to write from her. Is that sufficiently clear, Mr Pullicino Orlando? Do you need a diagram?

Insofar as concerns Mr Lou Bondi, we meet often socially and, as one does, discuss politics. We do not, however, co-ordinate our output, neither between ourselves nor - read my lips here, Mr Pullicino Orlando - by reference to Mr Cachia Caruana.

To say that we do is simply a lie, because it does not happen.