Oh look crime does pay. And if not just say it’s personal

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Abraham and his madness to even contemplate taking his son to be sacrificed. A few took me to task screaming that I am a horrible human being.

Then, out of the blue, we heard that a leading Gozitan personality had attacked his son. Not a verbal attack but a physical assault. This leading personality is none other than the longest-serving Member of Parliament of the Republic of Malta. I almost said the Republic of Ripe Bananas; but even that moniker is not enough for this sorry state of a country.

All is fine declared the now total arbiter of morals made in Malta – the Labour Party and the Office of the Prime Minister. Because, the reasoning goes, the man’s lunacy and inability to control his anger all concern his personal life.

Let’s get a few facts clear here before I am accused of the horrendous act of omission. Anton Refalo, who did the assaulting – and who is the top man at Heritage Malta – went ballistic for a most understandable reason. His son was caught doing something obnoxious: he was taking revenge on a former girlfriend by sending pornographic images of her.

The son was – and is – despicable. The father’s anguish is normal and salutary. Instead of covering up, he went fully against the son. But to lash out physically is just not right. In my book, and I used to think all those in authority follow the same book, violence is never acceptable and between family members it is even more condemnable.

However terrible the crime – and what the son did is a crime – no father, mother or any human being should take action beyond the justifiable.

But we live in a time when all madness, all wrong actions, are justified. Had the father considered that he himself, by his alleged shady dealings and by accepting to cover up for fellow Labourites who were caught in all sorts of unsavoury doings, had given his son the wrong model to follow?

Anton Refalo, the said Gozitan MP who was also Minister for Gozo, had declared earnings which did not seem to tally with his portfolio of assets. The line be- tween what is permissible and not has always been rather tenuous in Malta and Gozo and morals, once taken a notch down, descend in an ever-spiralling freefall.

Did Anton Refalo, for example, ever condemn, or try to exclude from his party, Cyrus Engerer? The latter did exactly the same thing as the son and distributed revenge porn. Engerer was, in fact, arraigned and found guilty in a court of law.

Yet Refalo did not try to stop Engerer being given plum EU positions by Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister of Malta. He also never objected to have Engerer as MEP candidate in his own party – the Labour Party which a few years ago screamed out that abuse or wrongdoing would not be tolerated under its watch.

Engerer’s case is horrendous, but crime for the Malta Labour Party pays. It pays big time in fact.

The lowering of our standards in all aspects, from meddling with the courts, to buildings con- structed abusively, to a very doubtful observance of the rule of law, to police and authorities who are more willing to pay homage to our prime minister or his ministers than the truth, is a very worrying state of affairs.

Besides Anton Refalo and Cyrus Engerer, the list of people who dabbled in 500 grey shades of criminality is endless, yet they were saluted as heroes and soldiers of steel by our prime minister or his buddies. Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri, Neville Gafà, John Bundy are just some of the ones who spring to mind.

The list is endless. The moral thermometer is hurriedly marking that we have fever beyond reducing.

Dr Anton Refalo – because the assaulter is also a Doctor of Law – saw fit to attack his son. Just like the old days when men and women set upon people who did anything they deemed wrong and lynched them, that is what the learned man of the law did.

The circus of idiocy on this island has truly taken hold of our senses.