As published on the Times of Malta: 16/05/2014.
The way Joseph Muscat & Co. have handled the fallout from their star MEP candidate’s criminal conviction is disgraceful. The Prime Minister and his Labour Party have stooped to previously uncharted depths of attack politics and spin with their attempts to muddy the waters, trying to make people look everywhere except at the facts.
They tried to undermine the judiciary that found Cyrus Engerer guilty of attempting to humiliate and destroy his former boyfriend. They tried to attribute the sentencing to a two-year suspended jail term to their imaginary and archaic vision of a politically-driven justice system, making it abundantly clear that that is how they perceive the judiciary should be: politically driven.
What they seem to have missed are two clear facts. The first is that the decision to appeal was taken when Labour was already in power and the second is that the judge who delivered last week’s sentence was the same judge who, on appeal, had decided that proceedings against Chris Said, when he was still a parliamentary secretary, were to go on.
No Nationalist Party spokesman, let alone the then Prime Minister, had tried to attribute any political motivation and Said immediately resigned to allow the judicial process to work unhindered, as it did, subsequently clearing him totally.
The judiciary is a fundamental pillar of our democracy and has always proven to be a safeguard for society. It should be allowed to continue to work unhindered and unencumbered by these false and irresponsible spin tactics, so reminiscent of the Mintoffian years of min mhux magħna, kontra tagħna (non-supporters are adversaries).
The facts of the case for which Engerer was convicted are important if we are to gauge correctly Muscat and his machine’s reaction to it.
The man the Prime Minister embraced, baptised as a “soldier of steel” and gave his blessing to had been, less than 24 hours before, condemned in a court of law. His crime was not simply the vaguely defined “distribution of pornography”. He was found guilty of entering into his ex-boyfriend’s home (without his knowledge), stealing intimate photos of the ex-boyfriend and distributing them, on numerous times, to his ex’s workmates and boss.
This was not a one-off crime but a premeditated plan intended to cause maximum damage to the real victim in this case.
Engerer, who is paid to be the government’s LGBT consultant, maliciously attempted to use the prejudice against gay people, which, unfortunately, still exists, to try to vindictively destroy another gay person’s reputation. The homophobic undertones of this act are plain to see.
The man who the Prime Minister appointed to supposedly tackle prejudice against the LGBT community was himself convicted of using that very same prejudice to attack and bully another person.
The crime is horrible but the Prime Ministers’ no-holds-barred defence of his friend, in parallel with an attack on the police and the judiciary, is surreal and is indicative of a hold that Engerer has on our Prime Minister, which we can only guess.
It should have been Muscat himself to stand up first and say that Engerer is not representative of the LGBT community in Malta. He should have been the one to say that his actions have no place in our society and do not reflect what a champion of gay rights should do.
He did not.
For reasons known only to himself, the Prime Minister chose to do the opposite. He turned Engerer into a Labour Party hero and retained him as his government’s LGBT champion. The editorial of The Sunday Times of Malta aptly described Muscat as having “licked the bottom of a splintered barrel”.
At this stage, one should also compare Muscat’s actions in the Engerer debacle with his pre-election doppelganger, the “political assassination” of Anġlu Farrugia on the basis of critical remarks made against a member of the judiciary. Using the same yardstick on himself, what should the Prime Minister do now?
There are two roads to take: the high road and the low road. Muscat has once again taken the low road and screamed that “Engerer’s values are my values” at another of his rabble-rousing rallies. The more I see the way this government acts and reacts, the more I realise just how true those words are.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140516/opinion/Hands-off-law-courts.519203
