Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1470876
OPINION 12 maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 15 JUNE 2022 ONE of the effects of having conducted so many press inter- views, over the years, is that… it's difficult to watch other peo- ple do the same thing, without projecting myself into their shoes. So when I finally got round to watching the interview that caused such a ruckus this week – you know: the one where Op- position Home Affairs spokes- man Joe Giglio casually de- clared (around 500 times, in the space of five minutes) that he has 'serious reservations about Maria Efimova's credibility' – I couldn't help but pay close at- tention to Andrew Azzopardi's facial expression, at… around 15:16 on this video, to be pre- cise. OK, you can't exactly de- scribe it as a 'Frost-Nixon mo- ment' – well, maybe you can, in a vaguely satirical way – but it does seem to similarly capture the precise moment, of an (ad- mittedly far less dramatic) on- screen revelation. It starts with Andrew Azzopar- di breaking into a cheeky laugh, while sardonically commending Giglio on his earlier, 'clinical' replies; then – with increasingly wilder gesticulations - he invites the Nationalist shadow minister to contemplate the extraordi- nary implications of what he himself had only just said. Even if you don't pick it up from Azzopardi's body-lan- guage, it emerges quite clearly from his question. I'm taking the liberty to paraphrase it here (again, you can watch the orig- inal video), but to my ears it sounded a whole lot like: "You do realise, don't you, that what you just said has fired a torpedo directly into the en- gine-room of… not just those 'certain NGOs' you keep refer- ring to; but also, your own par- ty? Because, in case you hadn't noticed: the PN has spent most of the past five years, basing its entire platform on the pre- sumed veracity of Daphne Caruana Galizia's 2017 Egrant allegations: which, in turn, were based exclusively on documen- tation provided by Maria Efi- mova herself… whose credibil- ity you have only just finished seriously - but SERIOUSLY - undermining…" And, well, this brings me to the truly jaw-dropping part. At a certain level, I can under- stand how so many people out there (judging by comments I've seen, anyway) might interpret Joe Giglio's casual bombshell as some sort of naïve 'gaffe', on the part of an inexperienced politi- cian. That is to say: being new to the political game, Joe Giglio has simply not yet learnt that there is 'a time to speak your mind; and a time to keep your trap firmly SHUT'. Heck, it is even possible (though I doubt it) that Andrew Azzopardi himself might have had a similar impression, even as he asked that question… in which case, my early paraphrase would have to be reworded: 'Is it possible that someone such as yourself – not just a politician, but a seasoned criminal lawyer, with years of experience at the bar – would be so naïve as to utter such politically explosive statements… without even be- ing remotely aware of their im- plications?') But I find it far likelier that Az- zopardi's interpretation was ac- tually closer to my own. He was probably more 'surprised' that someone like Joe Giglio would so candidly 'fire that torpedo into the engine-room': not only in full knowledge of the damage that this would cause; but in a way that suggests he was actu- ally aiming to cause maximum damage, while he was at it… Either way, however: up until this point, we are forced to con- cede the (highly unlikely) pos- sibility that Giglio may indeed have experienced a momentary 'lapsus', there… and that he just started spouting out his own personal opinions, in that ab- sent-minded (and refreshing- ly honest) way that politicians sometimes, but very rarely, do… But after our 'Azzopar- di-Giglio' moment? Not an- ymore! By this point, the enormity of those political im- plications has been (very capa- bly, it must be said) plastered into his face by the interviewer; and in the form of a question, no less… which, by definition, demands an answer. So, um… what was Joe Giglio's reply? At the risk of yet anoth- er paraphrase, it was to (meta- phorically) shrug his shoulders, and say: "Yeah, I know. I fired a torpedo into my own party's engine-room. And guess what? I did it on bloody purpose, too!" OK, maybe I added that last part myself… but nonetheless, even if the wording was (once again) 'clinical and lawyer-like', there can be no denying his ac- tual intentions, from this point onwards. Clearly, Joe Giglio knew all along that his statements would only prize open the very wound that has so effectively torn the Nationalist Party in two, over the past five years. And by ex- tension, this also suggests that he was fully expecting the bar- rage of outrage and criticism he would inevitably receive. Yet not only did he go ahead and do it all the same… but he openly invited all that criticism, too (his exact words were: 'They can come chasing after me all they like!") At this point, the question of whether he 'did it on purpose' becomes somewhat academ- ic, really. This leaves us to the question of WHY he did… … and here, I must confess that my guess is as good as yours. But still: on the understand- ing that this entire controver- sy – the Egrant affair, with all its unanswered (and possibly unanswerable) questions – has all along been a matter of pure speculation, right from the very beginning; and also, because I've been listening to a lot of Mozart recently (leading me to the inevitable conclusion that: 'Cosi Fan Tutti!'…) … what the heck? If 'my guess is as good than yours'… then it's no worse than anyone else's, is it? So for what it's worth: here are couple of other possibilities, to account for Joe Giglio's revela- tions in that interview. Starting with the one that Giglio himself emphasised so heavily through- out (500 times in five minutes, remember?): i.e., that he not only has serious doubts about Maria Efimova's credibility, as a whistle-blower… but that his own personal involvement in at least one other case (two, if you include the allegations of police mistreatment in custody) have convinced him that this person is – again, in his own words – 'malevolent'. Naturally, I will not venture into the actual question of whether Maria Efimova IS, in fact, 'malevolent'; but what Joe Giglio is telling us there is that – on the basis of his own direct involvement (and yes: that also means 'looking at it from the perspective of his ex-clients, as a former lawyer for Pilatus Bank') – she is simply 'not a per- son to be trusted'. But, oh look: the party he him- self belongs to has, in fact, done nothing but 'trust her blindly' for the past five years (with po- litical results that have, let's face it, been utterly CATASTROPH- IC for the PN…). On a separate note, Joe Giglio can surely see – just as clear- ly as you and I can – that the entire demarcation line of this 'civil war', that has almost lit- erally detruncated the Nation- alist Party in the meantime, has from the outset been rooted in precisely in the same problem of 'trust'. It may not have always cen- tred so precisely on the Egrant allegations, in themselves; but it has always been a question of whether or not (as Andrew Azzopardi rightly put in, in his question) we "BELIEVE in Daphne Caruana"… or we "BE- LIEVE in Simon Busuttil (when he 'put his own head on the block', etc.)" So by taking such clear, une- quivocal aim at the very source of all this 'Evangelical Trust', Joe Giglio has also forced the Nationalist Party – and argu- ably those NGOs, too – to at least question its own, unswerv- ing faith in the matter. It is also worth mentioning that, while his former connec- tions to Pilatus Bank do place him in an awkward position, to be 'questioning Maria Efimova's credibility'… it also positions himself rather well to view cer- tain proceedings that are, quite frankly, invisible to the rest of us. Consider, for instance, how often Joe Giglio name-drops people 'he knows personally', in those five minutes. Includ- ing not just the directors of the bank itself; but the police in- spectors Efimova later accused of mistreatment; the Magistrate who presided over the Egrant enquiry… basically, the same people who have investigated (at whatever level, and howev- er thoroughly) her behaviour throughout that affair. Obviously, it doesn't add up to any concrete evidence that Ma- ria Efimova was, in fact, 'fraud- ulent'. (Some would even argue it does the opposite, in fact). But it might offer an explanation for why Joe Giglio himself was so surprisingly unfazed by Andrew Azzopardi's questions. We are, of course, still in the realm of guesswork; so I'll keep this part brief… but (to me, at any rate) it is perfectly conceiv- able that Joe Giglio may actual- ly know a good deal more than he let on in that interview; and that all those 'serious reserva- tions' of his, were actually just a warning shot – fired repeatedly across the bows of his own party – not to place such naïve trust, in someone who could very eas- ily (and very embarrassingly) turn out to be… a con. And having already established that: a) that is his own personal assessment of the matter any- way - whether or not it is 'a re- flection of the official PN posi- tion' - and; b) this issue marks the very demarcation line, of the divide that is still tearing the Nationalist Party asunder to this day… well, it looks to me as though Joe Giglio also wants to be damn sure that he ends up 'on the winning side' of that war: if - or 'when', as he himself so clearly seems to think – that actually happens... Naïve? Joe Giglio? Not quite… Raphael Vassallo