Oh dear, government has gone and had a temper tantrum, again. Someone get the dummy and rattle, quick. And all because the Caruana Galizia family has asked a leading international legal firm specialising in human rights violations for an opinion on how it has been (mis)treated by government in the aftermath of Daphne’s assassination.

That the family has felt the need to publicise this legal opinion has nothing to do with anti-government pettiness or attempting to brow-beat the courts. Sadly, it is the same strategy of transparency and preemptive public dissemination used by Jonathan Ferris and Maria Efimova, to safeguard the truth and possibly themselves. It speaks volumes about their collective distrust in the institutions that are meant to protect them.

The Caruana Galizias are also serving notice that if necessary they will take their case all the way to the European Courts of Human Rights. And this, really, is what provoked the government’s tantrum. In its parochially paternalistic perspective, the Caruana Galizias should be grateful that their democratically anointed lords and masters have actually managed to catch the suspected material perpetrators. I mean, honestly, which Festa Partit would go to these lengths to apprehend the killers of one of its enemies?

Instead, the family had the temerity to cast doubt on the will of the government/ the police (at this point, what’s the difference?) to go after who commissioned, paid for and stood to gain from this murder.

They are washing our dirty linen on the international stage and playing right into the hands of the MEPs’ own sectarian agendas, fumed the government. You could almost hear the 35 year-old echo of Mintoff’s fist banging on the old parliamentary benches at the passing of the Foreign Interference Act, that paranoid narrative of a delegitimised government to explain the 1981 perverse electoral results.

We need to stand together and defend pajjiżna, goes the atavistic drum-beat of Muscat’s troll army. And whoever does not goose-step into these serried defensive ranks must be a traitor, an enemy of the people, an existential threat.

Only a petulant government would not be able to rise above the emotions raging around Daphne’s murder and do its duty by her family

Government may well think its bombast carries the threat of an angry rattle-snake. But it sounds much more like a rattle in the hands of a spoilt child. Only a petulant government would not be able to rise above the emotions raging around Daphne’s murder and do its duty by her family, irrespective of the vituperation it receives. That is what adult governments do.

Muscat cannot with one breath rage that the “credibility and authority” of a “sovereign and democratic” government are being “undermined”, and with the next justify its callous indifference towards Daphne’s family and at the obvious conflicts of interest within the investigation by the ‘fact’ that the inquiring magistrate has the family’s trust.

As if this absolves government of due process and human decency.

Għaġeb of the Year

I have it on good authority that the Għaqda Nazzjonali Presepji Betlehem f’Għajnsielem is seriously considering awarding its top prize for services to Christmas cribs to none other than Malta’s Chief Volunteer. You see, next year they are expecting thousands of faithful to flock to Għajnsielem in December at the close of Malta’s stint as European Capital of Culture.  So they need to construct a semi-permanent seven-storey hotel with public swimming pool. You know, like the baths at Lourdes, just more progressive and pro-business. But there’s no time for the full planning permit circus, and frankly no need because this is all for charity, mhux hekk? So the Għaqda is looking for a qaddis, a saint to intercede for them with the Planning Authority so that it issues a quicky Development Notification Order by next month.

But there’s one hitch. When the Chief Volunteer was approached, she stipulated that the ceremony would have to be held in Betlehem. The original one. After all, what’s the point of being a self-effacing volunteer if you can’t get a free trip out of it?

But then, if you are ready to sacrifice the normalcy of your young girls’ childhood by putting them on the phones during your Party’s fundraising marathon so that it can benefit from the aura of their innocence, you truly deserve the Għaġeb of the Year Award.

Speaking of għaġeb, which means ‘wonder’ and is also the name of the Shepherd Staring in Wonder in the traditional Maltese crib, wasn’t it a jaw-slackening coincidence that the two major parties had their fundraising parties on the same day, to stoke their supporters’ rivalries?

And wasn’t it an even bigger għaġeb that new PN Deputy Leader Robert Arrigo pulled more than €100,000, presumably out of his hat, far more than any one donation or group of donations by any one from either party since these political telethons began? Can we please know, now, the names of who ‘donated’ more than €5,000 to either party?

Or do they think we are the Għaġeb?

sandrospiteri1965@gmail.com