What’s happened to PN MP Karol Aquilina over the past year ought to frighten each and every one of us. It’s the kind of thing we read of happening in Russia, in Azerbaijan or Turkey. Police and government stooges fabricating evidence to lay false charges at the feet of Opposition MPs in the type of nightmare usually faced by politicians in totalitarian dictatorships.
Karol Aquilina is soft-spoken but lethal to the crooks and murderers that have been squatting in Castille for the past eight years. He’s been at the forefront of the battle against the corruption and criminality of the PL government in office since 2013, a veritable thorn in the side of the villains in the Labour Party.
That explains, of course, why they and their sidekicks resorted in desperation to concocting an absurd lie about him, in order to try to bring him down. In clear machination with one or more police officers, Labour’s pet hyena fabricated a story about Aquilina’s dangerous driving, somehow got hold of a video that was doctored, by him or by the policemen who gave it to him, in an attempt to frame Aquilina.
The state of Malta’s police force, in itself, is enough to make anyone despair. As one scandal after another involving members of the force emerges, the only conclusion to be drawn is that far too many of them couldn’t be trusted to police a bucket of worms, let alone the population of an entire country.
But there’s little that compares with the base iniquity and shamefulness of Karl Stagno Navarra’s behaviour. The sheer degeneracy of it truly beggars belief.
In May of last year, Stagno Navarra reported on his One TV show that Aquilina had been driving dangerously, refusing to move aside for a diplomatic vehicle and running a red light, in an incident alleged to have taken place in 2019. The former NET News reporter, who washed up on the Labour Party TV station after working at Malta Today, demanded that the police commissioner take action against Aquilina.
The police, astonishingly, complied. Never mind that they’ve failed to take action against real criminals such as shamed former prime minister Joseph Muscat, disgraced former ministers Konrad Mizzi and Chris Cardona, and so many others implicated in some of the most serious crimes on the books.
No matter that accused financial criminal and former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri has been cited multiple times by assassins and accused assassins of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia as having been a lynchpin of the plot to kill her, and yet he has not, so far, been charged with that most serious crime of all.
No. Miscreant PL ministers and their sidekicks are allowed to scuttle freely about the island despite their clear involvement in serious crimes, but Karol Aquilina, on the basis of a doctored video that landed on the lap of one of Muscat’s most vicious attack dogs, was charged almost immediately.
Of course, the fact that Stagno Navarra was able to get hold of and broadcast the video he said proved Aquilina’s crimes, which has turned out to be doctored footage anyway, illustrates just how desperate the situation within the police force is. A country that can’t trust its law enforcement officers is essentially in a state of emergency.
Fortunately, despite political appointments having diluted the confidence of the public in the judiciary, some judges and magistrates can still be counted on, making them perhaps the country’s last defence against the total annihilation of Malta’s battered democracy.
This week, Aquilina was cleared in court of all charges against him. The PN has now called for an investigation into how Stagno Navarra got hold of the video and how it was manipulated to “carry out a character assassination” of the PN MP.
There are many in Malta who need to learn the hard truth about the wickedness of making up malicious lies about others.
To be clear, this malevolent gossiping, lying about others to protect oneself or one’s “hero,” is not a sin only Stagno Navarra or the PL indulges in. In supposedly Catholic Malta, there are many across all political divides and social groups who’ve been guilty of attempting to discredit others through spreading lies about them.
The reality, of course, is that people who do spread lies about others always do so knowingly, and with an ulterior motive. In this case, the evil intent is so glaringly obvious, it’s astonishing that the perpetrators decided to go ahead anyway.
The Malta Labour Party is utterly toxic. There’s no other way to describe this former political party turned den of liars and thieves. And apart from their own, home-grown crooks, it acts like a magnet to any dishonest, ill-intentioned people.
Rejects and discards from other Parties gravitate towards it, knowing they’ll always find a niche within the PL. People like Stagno Navarra, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Ian Castaldi Paris, Robert Musumeci… the worst elements of the PN all seem to find themselves embraced by the PL at some point.
A turncoat is, by definition, a traitor. One who abandons his/her cause in order to join the opposing side for personal gain. A turncoat is someone who betrays his/her own principles and values in order to benefit in some way.
Someone who leaves a political party in disgust at the corruption or criminality it’s allowing to run rampant, or because it abandons the ideology or morality that it’s supposed to uphold, isn’t a turncoat. Marlene Farrugia and Godfrey Farrugia, who left the PL in horror at what disgraced former prime minister Joseph Muscat’s government had become, are not turncoats. They’re heroes.
Stagno Navarra and the rest of his sorry clan are, however, turncoats. Their departures were not dictated by conscience, but self-interest. The reasons Stagno Navarra fell out with the PN are well documented, nowhere more unambiguously than on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog. The PL’s willingness to take him in, despite knowing how many dark shadows hung over his head, is just further evidence of its essential malevolence.
It really has come to the point where, if there’s a single honest person left, either within the Party structures or among its supporters, they need to stand up and leave, now.
Stagno Navarra’s attempt to use lies and fabrication is only one in a long list of attempted frame-ups against Opposition politicians, including David Casa, Simon Busuttil and, of course, Giovanna Debono.
Stagno Navarra’s abject shame is what anyone who indulges in this type of character assassination should see every time they look in the mirror. In one way or another, the truth does always win in the end.
Featured photo shows Karl Stagno Navarra during his TV programme on the Labour Party’s station.
If more evidence were needed that the top table is now really feeling the heat in the kitchen, Blanche has certainly put more cats amongst the pigeons in this piece.
Facts are facts and thank goodness there are still members of the judiciary who are prepared and able to see through the smoke emanating from the kitchen.
Agreed, James. Facts are facts and one despairs at the state of the country at the moment. However, let’s not forget other facts like the fact that the Farrugias worked tirelessly to bring Muscat to power. Is it possible that they were so short sighted in 2013 not to realise what was in store for us with a PL victory? No, they are not heroes but people with such a poor sense of judgement that they should not be trusted with managing a market stall let alone a country.
So anyone duped by Labour in the past two elections shouldn’t try to take remedial action? Or do you have some actual proof that the Farrugias’ disenchantment is not genuine? If so, I’d like to hear it.
You flatter me. So the implication in your post is that I could see through these criminals as early as 2008 and the Farrugias, probably meeting them on a daily basis, could not.
Jools – it’s a fallacy to blame the one who has been deceived instead of the deceiver. Anyone can be deceived because everyone makes their decisions based on some level of trust. It’s only after the deceit is discovered that we can (should) decide not to trust the deceiver/s.
Chris- I totally agree with you. It is a very sad state of affairs when we find ourselves shorn of any shred of trust in the proper authorities and institutions to deliver justice and it will take years for that trust to be rebuilt.
James – I suspect there are a handful of corrupters who are holding reasonably decent people hostage – be it in the Courts, within the Police Force and within every single public institution. Once the key corrupters are identified, named, shamed and indicted, it will become possible for a transformation – A SHIFT – to take place in Malta.
I blame both. They are not mutually exclusive. The criminals’ place is in gaol. Those who were duped by them and helped propel them to power should hide themselves in shame.
The police force is part of the Mafia. It wasn’t perfect during the 25 years of PN administrations but today it’s just an extension to the local Mafia. Let’s evaluate history:
In May 1987, when then opposition and PN leader Eddie Fenech Adami became prime minister following years of suffering violence and frame ups, the police force was actually non-existent. What was called a police force was in fact an extension of the Labour Party. The men and few women in uniform were actually the Labour Party’s armed defenders, providing protection to the Labour terrorists while the latter were destroying and gutting democracy, and gunning down PN supporters, literally.
Fenech Adami had to start from scratch. Many of those police force members remained within the force but at least the top men were replaced with real policemen. Slowly, things started getting better. Older policemen retired, a police academy was set up and some form of order came into existence. By 2000 the police force was professional and upright enough to indict a former PN minister, two corrupt judges and much more.
Enter Joseph Muscat in March 2013. In October 2014 a bomb exploded in the entrance to a residence of a police inspector. That was a message to all honest police members to comply with the NEW police bosses. From thence, the police force went south. Today, under the new police commissioner, they is still defending the corrupt politicians and their criminal cronies albeit with more subtlety.
There’s quite a bit of a difference between May 1987 and today. The Labour Party, since it lost power in May 21987 has upgraded its methodology to space age level. While Mintoff had banned computers, Joseph Muscat used and abused technology to create a Putinesque state of affairs where propaganda, frame-ups and journalist bashing/killing helps him get elected and re-elected.
Malta’s future is now highly compromised. Joseph Muscat’s anointed king’s only aim is to win the forthcoming election. Then the Party will consolidate its position, reinstate Joseph Muscat together with most of the corrupt circle of cronies and politicians, and thus avoid jail time for all.
Anyone who thinks that Robert Abel means well is a fool.
Good sum up. And unless a lightening bolt hits the electorate, that’s what will happen.
Liar Liar Your pants are on fire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHAME on you stagno navarra – GO AND HIDE IN SHAME You’re just as disgustful as the most corrupt pm Malta ever had together with his corrupt muvument liars and assassins..
Thou shalt not bear false witness against they neighbour because, as sure as hell, it will boomerang a millionfold.
Even Mosses knew that in c.1300 BCE.
There should be an independent authority to investigate corruption in the police corp. This authority should act independently from the police and from the government. The problem is to find the right persons to run this authority.
Don’t worry that’s why many diehard Labourites will abstain from voting in the forthcoming general election. Robert nad his Cabinet will have to answer to the Labour Party followers for all of this
Are you serious? Do you really think that the Gahan Labour Party followers will not follow their masters’ voices?