And it was war…

Perhaps the location of a news conference down in a quarry is the ideal setting for launching a phony campaign. Hunters’ FKNK CEO Lino Farrugia sat at the back of the launch of the IVA campaign as Kathleen Grima, a lawyer, tried hard to promote the impression that this was a positive campaign.

Outside, his brother in arms, FKNK president Joe Perici Calascione, took his hunting weapon and shot himself in the foot, declaring this was WAR! He was speaking to a Times of Malta journalist.

Kathleen, the same woman who has never picked a shotgun in her life, never taken a shot at wildlife, or swung a half dead bird in a half circle to bang its head on a stone to kill it, will be the face of this plastic campaign.

I have little sympathy for ventriloquists and plagiarists. And that is exactly what the hunters are doing with their campaign. 

They have virtually lifted the pre-electoral Labour and PN marketing bandwagon, and placed a smiling family picnicking in the countryside with the word IVA, as Maltese and European.

There is nothing European about a Maltese hunter with a pig’s belly sporting camouflage trousers and a gun. That is a universal, modern version of Flintstone.

I have been assured by the Labour and PN parties that they have not lent a helping hand. I would like to think so. I would like to think that the Prime Minister and his wife, who were called all sorts of names when the hunters took umbrage, have not lent one piece of advice to the hunters.  And the same I would imagine for the PN.

The happy looking family portrayed on the hunters’ brochure should take the risk of going with their baby to Mizieb during the hunting season, to get a taste of the hunters’ warm hospitality.

But it is not only plagiarism that worries me, what is really my concern is the devil portraying himself to be an angel.

The hunters are not a bunch of nice guys, they are rough, violent and intolerant bird killers. They are so self-righteous they continue imagining they have some God-given right to take over the countryside and shoot at will.

The hunters are not showing their true colours, and we do not need much imagination to know what their true colours are all about – we have very clear examples of them.

They caused irreparable damage to prehistoric temples, daubed paint on Neolithic temples and historical buildings, destroyed kerbs and lampposts, vandalised gardens and worst of all attacked people who did not agree with them.

Now the hunters’ president, Joe Perici Calascione has said that it is war.  

Well, wars involve victors and losers.  

In this so-called war there will be victors only if we vote No, and losers if we vote Yes.  

What we have done in SHout has nothing to do with advancing our position. 

We have nothing to gain personally.

But this country and its people do. 

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In the last two weeks, there has been a storm about two former ministers from the Nationalist party who had not declared their Swiss accounts.  The two men are no longer political protagonists. But they were summarily suspended by the PN from their party membership.  Many PN bigwigs have expressed their opinion to me that it was a rather Quixotic decision.

Everyone knew or knows that Ninu Zammit and Michael Falzon today do not hold any major role in politics and even if so, they had repatriated their monies and did so when there was a strict compliance procedure in place.  

Needless to say their real sin was not declaring the accounts in 1987.  But the MPs’ parliamentary declarations in 1987 were not exactly taken very seriously.

I think that the reaction by Busuttil was an overreaction but one cannot condemn his reasoning behind it.  No Swiss secret account holder should be taken lightly.

One can also question his refusal to condemn Austin Gatt but then again, that is his problem.

What is important is to put everything into context.

The Independent published the news about the accounts as any other newspaper would have done.

And what is abundantly clear is that there clearly was a good measure of connivance with the bile queen.

You will excuse me for not mentioning her name, for the simple reason that I have run out of Rennies and have every interest in protecting my stomach from ulcers.

Well, we all know that the bile queen’s son works with a journalist organisation abroad which had the details of the Swiss leaks. 

It is of course unthinkable that the son would leak such sensitive information to his mother, the bile queen. Indeed one cannot speculate on this because it is as far fetched as drowning Vanilla ice cream in ketchup sauce.

But it seems that information about three Maltese personalities who all happen to hail from the Nationalist family, Tancred Tabone, Ninu Zammit and Michael Falzon were the ones named.   All, it appears, have repatriated their foreign accounts.

It follows that the ethereal link between The Independent and the bile queen was very evident.  As one would obviously expect, and of course this link seems to have extended to the PN as well.

In fact I am informed that the party was informed well in advance of the story about the three names with Swiss accounts.

Even though there were those in the PN who could not see any sense in publicising the story.

What is of course missing in this whole story, is the political logic behind these revelations.

Why would a newspaper leaning heavily towards the PN (and do not get me wrong, they have every right to do so) and the bile queen herself hit out at people who are strongly associated with the Nationalists!

Unless there were some big Labour names as well – the reasoning was. But apparently either we are being held in abeyance, or there are no Labour names at all.

Well, in the case of The Independent I would guess, and this is only a guess, it has to do with publishing a good story and of course widening their readership.

Nothing surprising in that.

But in the case of the bile queen it turns out that this was a knee jerk reaction fuelled by her anger at being targeted by the Inland Revenue commissioner and the garnishee on all her current accounts.

Here is a person who scorns and demolishes all those who do not declare monies held abroad when she herself was not compliant and is being called by the tax authorities for having undeclared sales of over €560,000 since 2004.

But most important of all, the bile queen did not submit a tax return for at least 10 years.

Take a deep breath. Yes, 10 years. Perhaps it will be appropriate at this point to remind people how “shocked” she was when Harry Vassallo did not fill in his VAT return, and was condemned to imprisonment.

What gall, that the same person then preaches and passes judgement over those who failed to declare their monies of over 25 years ago, and who long ago regularised their position.   

What happens next is maybe a repeat of what happened some years back, when the Bile Queen’s husband reported her to the Mosta police for using their dinner plates as throwers use their discus, only aiming them at him.

Instead of disappearing into her shell or doing like a disgraced Korean journalist and locking herself in a monastery she entered into a horrific and hysterical rampage against Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera.

Her attempt to deviate public attention then was evident but not to all the purblind followers who rejoiced in her hate commentary. The same is happening now. For years the bile queen literally failed to declare tax and she is now facing a garnishee on her accounts.

One can imagine her state of mind.

The pity is not her state of mind, but the fact that she is determining the political direction of a major political party. It is time that Simon Busuttil and especially Chris Said take their contact list and delete her address, her mobile number and email forever.

Failing to do this may lead others to accuse the PN of being at the bile queen’s beck and call. Now how’s that for change?