This could prove to be a very interesting day in court. Pierre Portelli is due for cross-examination in the case I filed against the PN last August because by his own admission he decided not to carry a brief statement in reply to wrongful reporting on NET TV. They had said at the time I lied about Adrian Delia whilst lying about what I said.
But that’s by the by.
The real story here is that if you think that Pierre Portelli’s dramatic resignation last night is some form of surrender or some dignified ride into the sunset, you have another think coming.
Read his resignation letter again.
It assumes no responsibility for the current state the PN is in. It does not even seek to protect the great leader elett demokratikament mit-tesserati because he has become the story and a distraction from Adrian Delia’s great campaigns.
Pierre Portelli does not as much as fall onto his sword as he checks it out of the PN’s inventory so he can wield it with all the violence he feels appropriate on those he perceives as his enemies.
Pierre Portelli intends to go on with just what he has been doing for several months. Firing upon people who have voted PN all their lives as if to make sure they never find any reason to do so again. In his resignation letter he says that having left his post at the PN’s media house, all he now remains is a “Malti u Nazzjonalist” with a license to hurt anyone he perceives as his enemy.
So what’s changed? Nothing really. He used his position at Net to pursue his obsessions. I can mention the ones closest to me: the way he slandered Occupy Justice activists as fraudsters and baby-killers. The way he would instruct his staff to ignore news stories of anti-corruption activism. The way he would get his staff to ignore the fact that a journalist who wrote for his newspapers was killed in a car bomb quite possibly for stories he published himself.
He has been conducting a personal crusade over-compensating for the realisation that he is far less qualified for the job he took on than he ever realised, consumed by the chips on his shoulder, driven mad by that Salieri syndrome: the ability to recognise genius in his profession and therefore to be the first to understand that he doesn’t have it.
He is the Patron Saint of Mediocrities and he’ll be damned if he won’t fall fighting a holy war on their behalf.
Reports of his unhinged and deranged rants flowed out of the Executive Committee meeting last night. That pathetic obsession of small-minded men Daphne Caruana Galizia used to describe so well that forced these characters to focus all their obsessions, their self-consciousness, their personal frustrations and all too apparent inadequacies and project them on a single woman blaming her for jinxing their existence came through so clearly last night.
It was all Daphne Caruana Galizia’s fault, he said. She who has been dead 20 months can still, he thinks, be blamed for his entirely self-inflicted misfortunes. He said she told him she’d destroy Adrian Delia. Quite apart from the fact that that is entirely out of character, he should have expressed regret he did not trust her judgement at the time and heed her warning that he was backing someone who would sap and undermine Maltese democracy’s last hope for survival: the Nationalist Party.
She warned him he should have put his intellectual resources, such as they are, more usefully than bringing into play a shady nincompoop with as much experience in running a political party and providing a public service as my dog, but without the selflessness and loyalty.
She warned him as she warned us all publishing what she knew. He didn’t listen, nor did the majority of the tesserati. Many of those tesserati now regret ignoring her warnings, belatedly understanding the significance of the stories that she published feeling only contrition for having stubbornly gone at the time for what seemed fresh, combative and exciting. But turned out to be incompetent, self-absorbed and embarrassing.
But Pierre Portelli is not as smart as those repentant tesserati. As he sees it, everyone else is wrong about his choice for leadership of the PN and he’s going to hurt them for not seeing it.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was never an easy target, though now her arguments, her clear presentation of facts, her discernment and her analysis have fallen silent. It is easier for him to blame her. Perhaps now it is easier to appreciate how unanimous Net and Super One have become when they’re dealing with reporting of corruption, wrongdoing and pathological mediocrity in public service. Like Joseph Muscat, Pierre Portelli still pities himself for the ‘harshness’ of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s criticism.
Of course, Pierre Portelli’s ire does not end there. He has a long hit list he wants to tick off. At the Executive Committee meeting of the PN, he charged Occupy Justice activists of forming for the express purpose of undermining Adrian Delia. As usual, he gets the wrong end of the stick. Occupy Justice formed to make up for Adrian Delia’s complete inadequacy in dealing with the assassination of a journalist. And that inadequacy is Pierre Portelli’s responsibility at least as much as Adrian Delia’s himself.
Women who have given up their time to fight a battle that he was paid to do and didn’t will be targeted by Pierre Portelli’s suicide bombings.
I got a few mentions as well last night. He attacked people in the Executive Committee for daring to speak to me, daring to be lawyers for an organisation I’m part of, daring to allow themselves to be hired to represent me in court.
If you think Pierre Portelli resigned because he intends to stop harming the PN you need to cure yourself of some mindless optimism. This is no dress rehearsal for Adrian Delia’s departure. This is the transformation of the role of his henchman from back-room strategist (to use an undeservedly flattering term) to beyond-the-enemy-lines commando.
He’ll be just as disastrous in that role as he’s been in the one he had yesterday. You just can’t fight political battles without regard to reality. And that has been Pierre Portelli’s specialisation since he denied himself the wisdom of heeding Daphne Caruana Galizia’s advice. Adrian Delia? Don’t go there.
He’s due on the witness stand today in court. He’s used that platform before to mouth irrelevancies intended to hurt the demons in his mind. I fully expect he’ll do the same today again. Even more so now that he’s not even nominally responsible for the damage he’s already done to the party he professes to love.