A blanket for Chris Fearne

Last June, Carmen Ciantar resigned from her top job at the agency that delivers government projects in the health sector. Carmen Ciantar was Chris Fearne’s close political collaborator. He was the one to appoint her to her position. She had other jobs before: on the Transport Malta board, at the utility billing agency, and lastly, at the Foundation for Medical Services.

However, a Pakistan newspaper a year ago said Ciantar pocketed nearly €500,000 from Vitals, the first contractor to win the public hospitals concession. It was a ridiculous story because Carmen Ciantar was nowhere near the decision to award the hospitals to Vitals. Some Vitals owners signed an MOU with the government in October 2014. The government decided to award the three hospitals to Vitals in June 2015. At the time, Ciantar was still issuing electricity bills. She had nothing to do with the health sector.

When the Pakistani newspaper ran the story, it looked absurd right away. If someone had been bribed to sell the hospitals, it would have been someone who had a share in the decision to sell them in the first place.

A little later, another story appeared on a Belgian website. The website reported that Carmen Ciantar’s daughter received €3.2 million from a Russian looking to purchase a Maltese passport. The money was meant for Chris Fearne. The story was taken down sometime later. It also looked ridiculous from the outset. Chris Fearne had nothing to do with passports. Let alone Carmen Ciantar’s daughter.

This was disinformation. Many have only heard of it for the first time because Chris Fearne made a fuss about it. Disinformation is vile and cruel, and because the world is full of people who do not think before repeating what they hear, it is effective.

Chris Fearne should know a thing or two about disinformation. He’s the Labour Party Deputy Leader, the party which owns Super 1. Disinformation is their mission. I’ll speak only of a case decided on by the courts and which concerns me: when Super 1 said people from Repubblika conducting a protest in Valletta went wild insulting and threatening children with disability who happened to be in Valletta to get a medal from the President. They ran it with a photo of me. Because, you know, Manuel Delia is such scum that he’ll go crazy mouthing insults and threats just at the sight of a disabled child.

Disinformation tends to be composed of gross exaggerations. It needs to shock. They won’t say Manuel Delia insulted an innocent bystander. He insulted a disabled child. They won’t say Chris Fearne lined his pockets. They’ll say he pocketed more than €3 million.

So this imaginary Russian wanted to buy a passport that would cost him €1 million but paid three times that sum in a kickback to an unrelated minister. They exaggerate to avoid having to answer in court if they’re ever caught because a court would think the story is so over the top that it must be a joke.

The damage would be done. Not everyone understands what’s possible and what’s self-evidently exaggerated.

Consider when someone – I still don’t know who – cloned my email account to write to everyone that I was losing it and that I was reporting the way I was about Yorgen Fenech because I was missing my medication. Some people believed that was me writing. They thought I had gone mad.

Don’t think this only happened to me. I am sticking to my examples to not drag victims into my arguments.

Thanks to journalists (because the police did bugger all), we found out who Chris Fearne and Carmen Ciantar’s enemies were. We saw an email from Armin Ernst, who ran the Maltese hospitals under Vitals and after under Steward, where he wrote about rumours that Chris Fearne and Carmen Ciantar were more than colleagues. Let’s see how to exploit their vulnerabilities to damage their reputations.

We read this now. Chris Fearne must have long suspected who was damaging him. He says that on one side of the government, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi were cheating, fixing, and scheming; on the other side, he was ever honest, his purity shining blindingly. The filthy looks worse standing next to the clean. The filthy dirties the clean to avoid standing out.

Now we see that they sought to damage him with impossible and exaggerated corruption, which was without purpose and did not benefit whoever was supposed to be paying the millions; Chris Fearne comes on stage, waxing melodramatic and demanding Parliament’s protection.

This is what I wanted to discuss. His request for protection. How he stood in Parliament to say that those who lied about him could do worse and that he needed Parliament to protect him. Then Anġlu Farrugia agreed because, he said, that’s what happens in the British House of Commons.

The victim of disinformation disinforms.

British MPs were indeed victims of disinformation. Russia is likely the source of the attack on them. The MPs asked difficult questions, scrutinised their government, sat on oversight committees, and organised campaigns of lies to scare and silence them.

The MPs are not the government: they are rather watchdogs on the government. That is why Parliament intervenes to defend them and ensure they can fulfil their function.

The disinformation about Chris Fearne was not inflicted because he is an MP. It was done because he was a government minister. He was deputy prime minister. The government has every means to protect its ministers. The police work for them. If the government wants to speak to the American embassy to ask the American authorities to investigate Steward, they can get them on the phone.

It is for some backbenchers who are taking risks and asking tough questions from the government that should be asking for Parliament’s protection. It is not for someone who was deputy prime minister when the events he complained about occurred.

Firstly, consider the absurdity of the ritual. Anġlu Farrugia, in all pomp and circumstance, tells him, ‘Of course, honourable Chris Fearne, we will protect you.’ Government MPs applaud the solemn vow. What form does the protection take? Anġlu Farrugia writes a stiff email to the police chief saying, ‘Take care of him please’. Come off it! Are you for real?

Secondly, we ask, why did Chris Fearne not knock on the right door? Why did he not ask the government for the protection he felt he needed? Wasn’t he a government official when he was faced with disinformation? Didn’t they do it to him because he was a government official?

They either cannot distinguish government from Parliament, or a request from government does not make that much of a drama for the theatre they wanted to organise. This is all for show. A month ago, Robert Abela was intimidating the inquriing magistrate who was closing the inquiry and naming Chris Fearne. And he said how cruel she was while damaging Labour. Now, Robert Abela is saying that if the magistrate hearing the compilation of evidence does not indict Fearne, he’ll make him European Commissioner. They threaten the courts by hook and by crook.

Look, I’m not saying that a wrongdoer should be abandoned to the threats of their former accomplices. But let’s not lose perspective on things. How many times did Chris Fearne stand in the same Parliament to insult and mock with that slimy sarcasm he is so famous for those who criticised the hospitals concession? How often did he insult and shut up as his comrades insulted Simon Busuttil and the supposedly empty boxes? How often did he allow Super 1 to ridicule the opposition for the lawsuits it pursued to claim back the hospitals for the country? How often did he let them ridicule Repubblika activists for our struggles to get an inquiry into the corruption at the hospitals even to start?

When he was doing all that, Chris Fearne recommended Ram Tumuluri and Armin Ernst and voted his confidence in Konrad Mizzi and Joseph Muscat. Chris Fearne was feeding the monster he now says he is afraid of, nourishing those he now says are capable of doing worse than lying about him in a Pakistani newspaper. Were you protecting these violent people and granting them the largest-ever public contract in this country’s history? Were you protecting these people who can do worse? Were you pleased with yourself when they were doing worse to others? It’s when they touched you that you first spoke up.

And if you don’t mind my asking, how can they do worse? Because if you have information that they are preparing an act of violence, do tell what you know. I understand you worry about your hide. I would not blame anyone for that. But this is a matter of national interest. If you are unsafe when, as deputy prime minister, you opened the door to them to let them fleece us, how much more in need of protection will the people who sought to block Steward from the beginning be? What danger is there for opposition MPs who battled the hospitals’ contract in court? What danger do journalists who expose corruption face? What danger for the activists, for the magistrates?

And who is it you’re really afraid of, Chris Fearne? From the Americans of Steward or the Maltese, they bribed? Tell us because if you’re in danger, imagine what we’re in.

The last word goes to Anġlu Farrugia. The one who would not name a room in Parliament for her when the monster of corruption killed Daphne Caruana Galizia. The one who benefited from decades of disinformation about her, including when he ruled as Deputy Leader of the party, which owns Super 1. The one who is as responsible as his mates for the disinformation that ran against her up to the moment she was killed by a car bomb.

For Chris Fearne, you stood bravely because they came down to bite him from the fabled fourth floor. Poor man.

Poor you.

MANUEL QAL, Season 1 Episode 27

Written by Manuel Delia
Video Production: Michael Kaden / NEWZ.mt