Shut up and go away

Accused murderer and alleged importer of a massacre-worthy quantity of firearms and toxins, Yorgen Fenech, is, according to his misguided mother, “not some kind of Rambo figure”.

His mother was writing an impassioned plea for everyone to stop being so mean to her son, the typical bully-boy who runs snivelling to mummy when his victims stand up to him.

Patricia Fenech’s diatribe, published on the “Yorgen Fenech Fan Club” blog of a university lecturer, was an example of the type of gas-lighting mendacity Malta’s had to put up with for the past eight years. It was dishonest, devious and an absolute outrage.

But one has to ask, where does she get the gall, the sheer brass neck to demand people feel sorry for her reprehensible offspring?

How dare she complain that people are critical of her son when she is the very person who brought him up, who, supposedly, imbued him with the values and principles he so clearly lacks entirely?

Her son, let’s not forget, is accused of paying for and organising the assassination of Malta’s leading journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, in order to stop her from exposing more of his corruption, money laundering and wrongdoing.

Her son, an alleged killer, according to the prosecution that has charged him with Caruana Galizia’s murder, decided that his ability to make money by fleecing the Maltese public and putting generations of Maltese into debt to pay for fuel at double the market price, so that he could pocket the difference, was more important than a human life, more important than a family’s devastation, more important than a country’s grief.

But of course, most of us are perfectly aware that apples, especially bad ones, don’t fall far from the tree.

And what a tree that was, to have produced this sleazy former casino boss, whose lack of morals is so complete that not only does he keep half the MPs in parliament in his pocket – doling out cash and jobs and hotel rooms to them as though he were tossing bones to a bunch of slathering hounds begging for treats – but he also cheats on his own wife and has “intimate friendships” with former “hostesses” while tumbling into rehab bragging to all and sundry that “money is our power”.

A more despicable character would be hard to find, if we weren’t in PL-hijacked Malta, being governed by a gang of the most soulless, dishonourable crooks ever to darken the hallowed halls of Castille.

But to get back to that tree. Patricia Fenech whimpered that people were being mean to her accused murderer of a son. She whined that the courts weren’t fair, she lied that her accused murderer of a son couldn’t possibly escape because where would he go, “completely on his own?” Miskin.

Never mind about the freshly-purchased flat in Paris, or the interest in a property in the US. Or any of the myriad other foreign properties the family owns. He’s got nowhere to go, all alone, miskin.

Yorgen Fenech is able to strut around bragging about his money making him powerful because Tumas Fenech, his grandfather, happened to be one of those miracle rags-to-riches stories that should warm the cockles of anyone’s heart.

Except this particular story does the opposite. Instead of producing a warm glow, it turns any properly wired heart to ice.

I can’t help gagging whenever I read a newspaper story about any of the Fenechs that describes them as “business tycoons”.

That’s almost like describing Al Capone as a “hospitality magnate”.

“Don’t ever talk to me about the honour of police captains or judges. If they couldn’t be bought they wouldn’t have the job,” Al Capone famously said.

“Money is our power,” our own, home-grown version crowed.

Is it possible that Maltese people have such short memories? Tumas Fenech started life as a humble plod in Hamrun, a police sergeant who managed, somehow on his policeman’s salary, to “cannily” buy, develop and sell property so that by the time he retired from the police force, he was able to buy into hotels and restaurants and casinos and, in short, build up an empire in a few short decades to rival any Chicago mobster’s.

Of course, his alleged “friendship” with the notorious 1970s thug-minister Lorry Sant, whose penchant for suddenly doling out building permits for “green area” land bought for pennies by his familiars, stood him in good stead.

As many of us remember well, under Lorry Sant, and for his very best buddies, “green” had a nasty habit of turning “brown” immediately after contracts changed hands.

The unholy alliance with corrupt politicians was the Holy Grail of wisdom passed on from grandfather, to father and then to hapless, cocky, hubris-courting son, Yorgen.

In any normal country, owners of wealth that’s built in suspicious circumstances, even if there’s not enough evidence for police action, would be shunned by polite society. Honest businessmen would shy away from being associated with them. Decent politicians would keep them at several arms’ lengths.

Here, though, the “mejtin bil-guħ” fall over themselves, tongues hanging out, to brown-nose them, beg favours from them, go to their weddings, eat Sunday lunch at their “ranches”.

And so, these dreadful people’s mothers, despite knowing exactly how their families’ money was made, despite understanding perfectly well how despicable are the actions of their sons, these appalling matriarchs take to social media or maverick lecturers’ blogs, to demand their criminal offspring are treated with kid gloves.

Accused financial criminal Keith Schembri, who’s been named in court by several of Caruana Galizia’s murderers as having been one of the lead conspirators behind her assassination, was the beneficiary of his own mother’s Facebook rant, when she demanded people stop being mean about her son because he was unwell.

If Josephine Schembri can write a Facebook post ranting about how much she wished she “lived in a dictatorship where freedom of speech didn’t exist” and people would be prohibited from saying anything true about her villainous son, then surely Patricia Fenech can go one further and write a whole article about how her deplorable offspring is a good boy really, no “Rambo figure” despite his artillery-focused internet shopping spree (the weapons never arrived, late delivery or something, hope he got a refund) and people really should stop being nasty about him.

Please go away, Patricia Fenech. Your son has been charged with murdering a journalist. Your son has been exposed as being involved in bribery of ministers, money laundering, and some of the most corrupt deals in Malta’s history. He was trying to escape Malta when he was caught by the police, he was being helped to abscond by his uncle and his brother. He was seeking to import an entire arsenal of deadly weapons.

Just shut up and go away. The damage your son has done to this country will take decades, if ever, to repair. Daphne Caruana Galizia will never be returned to us. The extent of corruption he engendered beggars belief. Shut up and go away. And thank your lucky stars that your son’s accusers are not made of the same vicious and vindictive stuff as he is.