A staged interview asked Rosianne Cutajar what she thought her worst defect was.

 

Here’s a list of things she didn’t mention. Shagging a business tycoon and accepting his gifts even though damning evidence emerged that he bribed politicians to get public contracts. Collecting a hefty commission from a property sale (involving the same business tycoon) and failing to declare it in her tax returns and her Parliamentary income declaration. Accepting a €9,000 cash gift (from the same business tycoon) and days later speak in his defence at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Without declaring her interest.

None of these are her defects. Indeed, here’s Robert Musumeci speaking at one of Rosianne Cutajar’s campaign events. The eminent lawyer says Rosianne Cutajar has done nothing wrong. Except. Except. She pulled Nationalist voters to vote Labour which, he said, is the reason she suffered an injustice over the past months.

What has she suffered? She was fired from the government by Robert Abela. That’s all. She didn’t even get a reprimand from Parliament’s standards committee so that doesn’t count. So, Robert Musumeci’s complaint on behalf of Rosianne Cutajar is addressed to Robert Abela.

There are a few possible meanings to being “too genuine” (“ġenwina żżejjed”).

She may mean she feels she’s too candid or outspoken. Which can’t be the case because she was never forthright about her intimate relationship with Yorgen Fenech until after he was arrested and charged with killing Daphne Caruana Galizia, and then only because the evidence of their tryst came out in their phone chats recorded on Fenech’s phone.

Genuine could mean earnest or trustworthy. She’s neither because she cheated on her financial returns and misled Parliament by hiding her interests.

Or she could just mean that she felt she just hadn’t been dishonest enough, that she regrets not covering up her lies enough, that she was insufficiently artful. In other words that she regrets she got caught.

Not that it matters. She’ll be a government minister in three weeks’ time. And she’ll be able to lie to you to her heart’s content.