Despite the impression having been given weeks ago that he would be present for cross-examination, Pierre Portelli didn’t show up in court this morning “because he wasn’t notified”. The fact that he wasn’t notified and didn’t attend didn’t stop him from making snide remarks on his Facebook page, of course. But that’s Facebook, not real life.

The PN’s lawyer, Vince Galea, also said that as Pierre Portelli had resigned from the PN, he couldn’t produce a witness he can no longer control. Pierre Portelli will now need to be formally notified to attend the next hearing on 2 October by which time more water will have passed under the bridge than what is flushed from the melting ice cap.

Figure that. This is a case I filed last August to insist on my right for a reply (contradicting lies broadcast about me) to be published on NET TV. More than a year later and the matter is still hanging in an ether of irrelevance.

But the issue here is not the court case or the right for a reply to an unfairness long superseded by much worse.

The issue is Pierre Portelli no longer needing the witness stand in court as the platform for his knife-wielding. He has Super One for that.

When all is said and done – and one day this chaos will be – what you will likely remember is that the old John Dalli tactic of going to the Labour Party’s TV station to undermine the PN has since become mainstream.

The loons that bitched on the sidelines sniping at the heels of the long suffering Lawrence Gonzi, took over the PN in September 2017, and will not stop hacking and gnawing until they see the PN destroyed.

When John Dalli was leading his sapping campaign from Super One, Pierre Portelli was already abandoning his post at the PN for a first time. In 2010 he was one of the senior officials of the party, a role even more crucial in times when the party is in government when most of its leaders are busy with government business.

In 2010 he had the job, with others, of running the PN.

But he jumped ship and went to TVM in partnership with Labour’s former International Secretary and leader of its youth wing Joe Mifsud. He fucked off to let the party sink so that he could swim back in his own time to save it.

At least that’s how he seems to have imagined his grand scheme. Instead he has now brought the PN to a precipice never before experienced by any political party in Malta that went on to survive.

He’s not done yet. The bridge is crossed. So stand and watch it burn.