Employed ‘in trust’, acting in disgrace

In the normal course of business, I’d treat the written product of Neville Mario Gafa’ with the same contempt I reserve for that other Labour-leaning spewer of bile – you know the one, whose notoriety rests entirely on allegations of fraud, financial incontinence, and habitual skiving off the public teat.

I have no personal knowledge of the truth of those allegations, so let’s leave them at that -“allegations.” It’s no wonder, though, that he has been quoted as saying he has no fixed address: it’s said his name is mud on the rental market.

He’s reportedly been made persona non grata in more than a few watering holes, too – but again, mere allegations about a virtual nobody. Let’s leave him where he belongs.

His comrade-in-rants, often quoted by him indeed, is not, however, a virtual nobody.  Not any more and not because there’s any merit in his output, but because his bile has found institutional shelter.

This is a person who vilifies the recently deceased mother of an assassinated journalist.

This is a person whose conduct in Libya drew serious allegations – the kind that would make any decent person retreat from public life.

This is a person who campaigns incessantly to tarnish the memory of Daphne Caruana Galizia and who insults ambassadors and openly supports Putin.

He is defying an order of the Data Protection Commissioner to remove from his website a piece demanding the dismissal of a public employee whose only “offence” was to lay flowers at the protest memorial to Caruana Galizia.

Out of respect for that individual, I’ll leave names aside, but take it from me: Neville Gafa was found to have breached their rights and ordered to take the post down. He hasn’t – and should now face sanction.  I’m not holding my breath.

So why, you may ask, give this foul specimen the oxygen of publicity for which he pants so cravenly? Because sometimes, silence would be complicity.

The real story here lies in the mealy-mouthed defence mounted by his employer – the Office of the Prime Minister. We’re not talking about some minor publicly funded outfit where a spluttering oik suckles for a few euro.

We’re talking about one of the highest offices of state, which saw fit to reinstate Gafa into public employment after an unexplained hiatus.

After he was filmed destroying the protest memorial on the eighth anniversary of Caruana Galizia’s assassination, Gafa confirmed it was indeed he – and that he will (and did) continue, as though on some sacred mission.

The Office of the Prime Minister “distanced itself” from his actions, claiming he acted in a private capacity, entitled to freedom of expression like anyone else.

Mealy-mouthed is putting it mildly.

In this, it echoed that other paragon of free-expression hypocrisy, Owen Bonnici, who once muttered inanities about freedom of expression even as his ministry’s workers scrubbed the same memorial clean every night. The Constitutional Court later found him in breach of that very right. He remains a Minister.

So when the Office of the Prime Minister tells us that its employee “acts in a private capacity,” it insults our intelligence. There is no such thing as a civil servant who moonlights as a public disgrace.

Gafa does not possess the gift of miraculous multiple manifestation of disparity, with his various existences acting independently of each other.

When he vilifies Daphne’s late mother, Rose Vella, when he targets private citizens for showing respect, when he insults ambassadors, and when he does exactly what the court ordered the government not to do, Gafa does so while employed by the Office of the Prime Minister.

He does all this, incidentally, while openly giving aid and comfort to the current Prime Minister’s disgraced former client and predecessor in office. That’s for Robert Abela to worry about and for the rest of us to remember.

Gafa’s position within the Office of the Prime Minister is one “of trust,” to use that time-honoured euphemism. If Abela’s office truly trusts him, it cannot disown his conduct. By trying to do so, it renders itself complicit.

He might not speak for them officially, but make no mistake: he is one of them.  In the real world, an employee who brings their employer into disrepute faces the consequences.

In the political netherworld inhabited by Robert Abela, this clearly doesn’t apply.