Me? I have the face of someone who is going to lick ass after 9 March

When the PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil's ludicrous 'Nationalist face' comment was making the rounds, Dominic Gafa - a former Dom Mintoff sycophant - was happy to see his recording end up with Nathaniel Attard of NET.

Busuttil's 'wiċċ ta' Nazzjonalist' is comparable to Charles Mangion's 'DNA' comment in the 2008 election. Back then, the poor (or not that poor after all) Mangion was taken to the cleaners and made to look like Heinrich Himmler.

That Gafa frolics with those he would otherwise classify as natural enemies is obviously not expected from someone who was basically an extension of Dom Mintoff. The former Air Malta loader is the winner of several government contracts where he is renowned to pay his employees dismal wages and offer them quite incredibly horrible conditions. 

They call his line of work as 'precarious work' and of course Dominic Gafa does not feel at all guilty that his capitalist approach to business conflicts with his supposedly Mintoffian legacy.

His latest contract was at the Office of the Prime Minister at the Auberge de Castille - where he quoted an hourly work at a rate which would mean that his employees were paid below the minimum wage - is, of course, of no concern to Pawlu.

That contract took place last summer, at about the same time as he was recording the GWU's secretary general Tony Zarb.

Zarb, on the other hand, committed a remarkable, grand fuck up when he tried to convince Gafa that his newspapers would be more considerate if he allowed his workers to unionise. 

In other words, he said they would not hit out at him if he was a good boy.

He then indicated that he would push for Mr Gafa's companies to win tenders with the government of the day... suggesting of course that it would be much easier if there was a Labour government.

Now, I'm sure Muscat's day got a bit better when he heard the recording.

And of course, NET had no hang ups reproducing Zarb's 'ta' l-ostja' comments. It was quite funny, but it would of course be welcoming if they quoted expletives when they come to other people.

You see, even NET can be liberal.

Now, that was unbelievably stupid of Zarb. And if he doesn't believe he should resign, he should at least appreciate that the whole episode was horribly mishandled.

Now, some two days before this story was screened by Net, the queen of bile and character assassination concocted a news story and said that this company (MediaToday) entered into an agreement with the General Workers' Union to sell our media publications after the 9 March.

Apart from the fact that she is a big fat liar, the story is of course completely fabricated and that it was decided to take legal action against the gossip writer and apologist.

The coincidence was no coincidence at all: the bile queen published the big fat lie to coincide with the Gafa tapes.

I have said this once and I will say it again. I will be there to offer the same measure of undesirable comfort to any administration after the 9 March.  

And as I have not depended on the government's benevolence in the past few years, I have no intention of sucking up to any new or old government to pay for my bills.

Perhaps the queen of bile and all her good hairy and fat friends who enjoy pouring scorn on anything that moves can say the same.

It does show however that when a political party does not agree with a media outlet or an individual, it will do everything possible to make the life of that person 'hell on earth'.

When Net got hold of the Gafa recording, Paul Borg Olivier decided to only invite TVM, Independent and the Times to listen to the tape. Not MaltaToday, of course, or any other stations.

Norman Vella from TVM was present too, of course... though I'm not quite sure whether he is subcontracted from a private company to TVM, and what relationship he has to Where's Everybody?

If there is someone who certainly is biased, it is Norman Vella. His contempt for the GWU is well known: his father was a union leader with the GWU who fell out with the present leadership. But his negativity - and more importantly, his aversion to anyone who stands in the government's way - is legendary. He also has a problem: he thinks he's funny (when he's really not), and he believes himself to be journalist, when he's little more than a damn good gatekeeper.

Paul Borg Olivier believes that being selective in the choice of media is a prerogative he has every right to exercise.

It is not, and it also shows a short-sightedness nurtured by a siege mentality that boxes people as with us or against us.

It is so typical of politicians who are stuck in time and are unable to move on.

It just shows that with the PN's negative outlook to the 'independent' media is wrong.  To be fair, it is not only the PN that share this malaise. The Labour Party has all the traits of the PN and so does Alternattiva - who are unable to take criticism.

It is also very clear that the PN thinks that for someone to be trusted, they must be virulently anti-Labour and foursquare behind Lawrence Gonzi. 

It has not crossed their minds that while many people are not against the Nationalist Party per se, they do however have serious problems with Gonzi and his cronies, who promulgate his politics of evil retribution.

And the same, I suppose, applies to any party that structures itself in a similar way.

Perhaps I should reveal that since 2009, Lawrence Gonzi has refused to be interviewed by me, and has refused several invitations to visit the MediaToday newsroom to meet our journalists.

He is perfectly entitled to do this, but it just shows how clannish and insular he is.

There is little doubt in my mind that Gonzi thinks that we are acting on someone's behalf. It is perhaps in the nature of politicians to believe that everyone is against them and that those who criticise them are mannequins.

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There is one thing I am truly missing from the Prime Minister's melodramatic Cabinet meeting.

I would have expected him to blow a raspberry at the opposition and boast of achievements in getting a bloody good EU budget.

Instead, he went back to the oil scandal and convened the Cabinet to ask the President to issue a pardon to George Farrugia.

Why at 10pm on Friday evening? It simply makes no sense.

Of course, the PN strategy group has been unforgiving when it comes to the timing of the oil scandal. 

It is their opinion that no one should have published such an article. And that is, of course, if you are not journalist and your first allegiance is to a political party.

Thank God I have no political party and my allegiance is to the reader, and not to the politicians.

Of course, they do not believe this.  

Simon Busuttil is naturally of the opinion that such things should not be talked about.  But then, Busuttil is sounding more and more partisan and to be very frank, amazingly bigoted.

He reminds me of a fanatical missionary who invades South America and attempts to convince the natives that Roman Catholicism is the only real religion and a stairway to heaven - which they, sadly, ended up believing in, and that is why today South America remains of the best representations of a deprived and class society.

Of course, it does not cross their minds that we would have done the same if this scandal were under a Labour administration.

I can't blame them for not believing this. They simply cannot believe that they are beyond reproach, and surely they cannot remember what I have written in the past few years - probably because they have been too busy doing other things while we were probing Labour.

In a normal country, we should not be using precious time and space defending our patch.

It is symptomatic of our stunted understanding of the words 'tolerance' and 'respect'.  It is a reflection of our small size and of our tribal politics. It is a reflection of our history of hypocrisy, and the lust to remain in power.

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