Last Wednesday, when the news broke, I had already written my meisterwerk for the week, so you must have been disappointed on Saturday when, gasping for my erudition and insight, there was not a word about the shooting that has created such a furore.

I made up for it, insofar as concerns those of you have embraced the electronic world, by penning a few blogs, one of which was in the form of an open letter to the judges emeriti who have been charged by the Prime Minister with doing his job for him. Illum saw fit to dedicate quite a chunk of its resources to me, old picture and all, and to attribute – by way of acerbic comment mixed in with fact, as is their wont – motives to my blog that were less than precise.

For the record, I wasn’t ‘appealing’ to the former judges not to carry out their task, it’s up to them if they want to play the Prime Minister’s game. Illum, perhaps because its collective brain-cells were engaged in analysing the heinous crime committed by Ann Fenech (she put up a picture of the Chamber of the House, horror of horrors) didn’t get it. Apparently, some silly girl also didn’t get it, because she chose to characterise the piece as “desperate”, an opinion to which she is entitled, of course.

The story of the week (year?) moved at quite a jolly clip, with new facts leaping out from every conceivable source, primary among which was the blog by She Who Cannot Be Named. About the only place from where facts (as opposed to fantasy) were decidedly not coming was the ministry responsible for the police.

As I write, the police officer involved in the shooting incident was in the process of being arraigned, not less than six and a half days after the event. He wasn’t given bail, perhaps because after taking their own sweet time to arraign him, the cops suddenly came over all strict and rigorous.

So there we have it: a man who is accused of discharging a Glock into the back of an occupied vehicle driving away from him on Wednesday evening, a set of facts known to absolutely everyone who mattered within hours, if not minutes, was allowed to remain at liberty for almost a week. It is well known that most people who are alleged to have done far less are banged up and hauled into court so quickly that their feet don’t touch the ground.

The police minister’s position borders on the untenable for the delay in arraignment alone

The law will now take its course and we can let that side of things go without further comment.

But not the political side: that needs ventilation, to coin a phrase.

Even if the man hadn’t been the driver of the minister responsible for the police, even if there hadn’t been questions as to multiple ‘who, what, where, when, why’ aspects of the affair, even if there hadn’t been various versions put about as to who tried to do what and with whom to manipulate the way the whole thing was being handled, the minister’s position borders on the untenable for the delay in arraignment alone.

Moving on, I can’t be bothered to look it up, but I remember seeing a report that Minister Manuel Mallia, while explaining (was it in the House?) why his handle on the facts wasn’t quite up to the mark, said that he was in a bit of a panic.

Why was he, if he was? His driver was never in any danger and, anyway, it’s part of his job description that a ‘security driver’ has to be prepared to take a bit of the rough along with the smooth.

So why was Mallia in such a tizzy at the material time?

And, though it is not germane to the issue at hand, does he know that he was called a liar, and accused of lying to the House, rather on the lines that the Prime Minister has also, on a different matter, just been called a liar, by Chris Said? Aren’t these Honourable Gentlemen worried by these slurs?

Getting back to the point, though, one needs to add into the political soup the unheard of messing around with the crime scene(s), the allegations about potential witnesses being gagged, the rumours about the cosy relationship between the families concerned (check out She’s blog) and the stories about magic bullets that are fired into the air and then end up puncturing the fabric (and perhaps the engine) of a fleeing vehicle, to mention a few of the kites being flown all over the place.

When you do that little culinary thing, you begin to wonder why the Acting Police Commissioner hasn’t been directed to turn his own guts into a pretty set of garters for the minister’s calves and also why the minister himself hasn’t been told in no uncertain terms by his own boss to fall on his sword.

I know it’s a given that ministers blame their officials for everything that goes wrong on their watch (recall, if you will, Minister Evarist Bartolo’s insouciant manner of blaming everyone but himself when things went belly-up last summer) but here we have such a plethora of strands woven into such a complex web that I really can’t see how anyone can avoid pointing directly at the centre of it. This time, the buck won’t stop short of where it should, surely.

All of that said, though, the commenting classes, we the idle bought-and-paid-for apologists of GonziPN, to use the descriptor that has been bandied about for so long by silly girls and their squires, will probably be forgiven for conjecturing (is that a verb?) that heads other than those wearing ministerial smirks on their faces will have to roll.

I don’t think it takes much foresight to conclude that, a few days down the line, the justices emeriti will not find themselves able to plonk Minister the Hon. Dr Manuel Mallia squarely in the cross hairs. Others will have to take the flak, to use Minister the Hon. Dr Konrad Mizzi’s own felicitous expression, principal among them the media-savvy guy who runs Mallia’s ministry.

Silvio Scerri’s name has been mentioned many times, not only in connection with this case, and if it is true, as MaltaToday has written, that he was still trying to get the media to say that the bullets were fired skywards when the only way the publicly-available pictures could be justified was that the fleeing car was airborne, then perhaps it will be (has been?) decided in some smoke-filled room that it’s high time he went back to his business empire.

Will that be enough to save Mallia’s political hide? Don’t ask me, ask our Prime Minister, who alone knows, and knows why, if saved Mallia’s hide is to be.

No advice on nourishment this week, apart from mentioning Hugo’s in Paceville, where we went for a rather large, and good, supper before repairing to the Eden to watch Interstellar. It’s a long, almost overblown, movie which however repays a look, especially if you get the opportunity to see it in the newly-refurbished Screen 6.

I’m not entirely sure what the refurbishment funds were spent on, though, because the sound was pretty iffy. To be fair, it might be my ageing ears, and for the same reason, it may be that the stuffiness I was feeling was menopausal rather than environmental. It was, however, refreshing to note that pettifogging notions of political correctness in advertising have been slung out of the window, if the Bay 89.7FM ad is anything to go by – either that or the NCPE haven’t seen it.

Oh, and do make sure you have some euro left at the end of the evening, because parking doesn’t come cheap, even with the moviegoer’s discount.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/blogs