Watching the sad spectacle of the Police Commissioner give a press conference seventy-two hours after the most heinous crime and the first ever successful political assassination in Maltese history brought on me the hysterical tearful laughter that only tragically depressive situations can cause.
It looked like something from an Ed Wood film of a bungling provincial Soviet apparatchik announcing the program for the village socialist worker’s party after aliens kidnap his script writer.
I keep hearing people wonder what Daphne Caruana Galizia would make of this or that. I am going to presume I can guess what she would have made of this pathetic excuse for a crime conference. It was, as my wife eloquently put it, a fucking circus.
Lawrence Cutajar, bereft of his puppet master, flopped like Kermit just out of bacon. He looked like he had as much experience addressing a crime conference as I have of addressing the floor of the US Senate. And the acclamation he got was as sad as mine would have been.
But in many ways he accurately represented to the international press sitting there the impression they were already putting together of a secretive, veiled government afraid to speak because it has forgotten which lies it must make sure it does not contradict. They saw a bureaucratic horror sheltered under legal excuses to avoid giving answers, whether straight or bent. They saw a bungling, incompetent fool who could not investigate shop-lifting in a village corner-shop to save his life, never mind the crime of the century.
He said the FBI were flying in to advise him. Were they meaning to do that in the English language by any chance or were they bringing translators with them to deal with the natives?
Why did it take 72 hours to hold a crime conference the only real information provided in which was that an autopsy would be held tomorrow and nothing else could be answered because the magisterial inquiry was secret?
They could have said so Monday night. Damn, they should have said so Monday night.
How are we supposed to have any confidence is these bumblers, advised as they may well be by the FBI? How are we supposed to even know they know what they’re talking about? Could they not say if they were pursuing any leads? Could they not invite information from the public and whether a confidential line had been fielding calls while the case was still hot? Could they not say if they ruled out some of the loony theories being strewn about?
Could the police commissioner have prepared a better answer to the question on how he reacted to calls for his resignation? Did he not realise that the ‘Form IIC certificate’ standard issue answer that he had been promoted in the past so he surely must be fit for purpose would be a bit bleeding obvious since no one really thought he got to be police commissioner at puberty?
Did he not think that his promotions were precisely the most infuriating thing about his past because he was obviously placed in the position he is, not for his merit or his short-spraying Inter memorabilia collection but because like Kermit he only speaks when someone has their hand up his arse?
If I see another Labour troll calling me names because I’m giving a bad name to Malta, I swear I’ll scream. What name do you think our own TJ Hooker gave Malta today?
After this week Joseph Muscat has seen his dream of a post-Castile career in Brussels flushed down the toilet. I don’t expect Lawrence Cutajar is going to be running Interpol anytime soon.