Men’s club in Germany beats EU summit

Let’s see how we go about this.

Maybe it is a reflection of changed times that the most popular programme on our TV, Xarabank, decided to spend a day with a prostitute in yesterday’s programme. And an allegation by Daphne Caruana Galizia that minister Chris Cardona and a staffer visited a Men’s Club in Germany (forcefully denied by the minister who has sued Ms Caruana Galizia for libel) became the main talking point in Malta, far more than the EU informal summit held yesterday, which at the end, whatever its merits, emptied Valletta and caused grumbles all around. It was clearly Sex 1 – Summit 0. Whatever the minister’s forceful denials, he should really worry because, as astutely picked up by Beppe Fenech Adami, all that his friends were telling him was to stick it out and not let it bother him, rather than supported him in his denial. It was almost, one perceives, they knew the man only too well.

There is in all this a very common trait: people’s fixation with sex and transgression. Sex sells and an EU summit does not.

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People everywhere go overboard when such titillating details about the high and the mighty become public knowledge. What goes on behind high walls and closed doors cannot be known by the public but even the slightest association with transgression and sex has the public salivating for more. The government, which had big plans for the summit and which has worked so hard in its preparation, saw its plans for the big day turned upside down and the popular focus turn instead on what the minister did… or did not do.

Does all this make the allegation fact? No it does not, at least this side of the libel case (Only, according to NET News, up till yesterday evening, no libel case has been lodged).

There are some circumstantial details but a ton of circumstantial details does not amount to a fact. But the whole case has done huge damage to the government’s already tenuous good name, apart from ruining the build-up to the summit. It has become a new scandal almost every day. In a way, Chris Cardona was always a tragedy waiting to happen. He may be good at his daytime job, but his lifestyle, his off duty friendships, his habitats, all add up.

To Maltese viewers, this foray into the murky life of a high-class girlie club is a complete and mesmerising novelty. It is a habitat usually frequented by the clients and the hostesses, and sometimes too by police, undercover agents, detectives etc. Or only seen in television serials.

It should be pointed out that the private, after-hours, forays by an adult person is his own business. Some argue that that is not the case if he is a minister or a politician and there are enough cases to sustain this argument.

But things get blurred here. The negative impact of such an allegation is not shock at the immorality of the case but rather that a person who plays around is not a reliable person to hold an office.

If Dr Cardona lodges his libel complaint the court will decide on who should produce the onus of proof.

That’s where things get feisty. But the damage, the cumulative damage, has already been done.