Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/281887
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 23 MARCH 2014 Opinion 20 A s I may have mentioned before, I am not exactly a superstitious man. But just as the deeply religious are occasionally plagued by doubt, so too are the deeply sceptical: especially when the sheer extent of weirdness that surrounds them can only be explained by not- entirely-natural phenomena. Take Enemalta, for instance. A purely dispassionate assessment of its vicissitudes over the past three or four decades can only lead to one possible conclusion: that the state energy corporation is accursed. What? Mismanagement, you say? Corruption? Government interference? Fiddlesticks. All these things are uniquely human phenomena, and as such do not account for the sheer preponderance of blighted ill-fortune that has aff licted Enemalta for so long. Certainly it cannot explain the latest story in which the energy provider has been implicated. Corruption at the level of fuel purchase I can understand… even if there is something vaguely metaphysical about how the investigations have so far taken place. And you don't have to be very 'smart' to work out how such a thing as 'meter tampering' could have so easily occurred, either. But that Enemalta would also find itself implicated in the Mosta cat crucifixion cases? That, of all earthly occupations imaginable, the man arrested for perpetrating all that macabre, semi-Satanic barbarit y would just happen to be an Enemalta engineer? No, this is too much, I tell you. It is almost as though there is a hidden, spectral hand guiding all developments in this country, so that if something occurs that is so repugnant, so abhorrent and so indescribably hideous that the entire nation is aroused like Ruzar Briffa's 'kotra' to indignation… then the name of 'Enemalta' must somehow, somewhere be mentioned in the story. And what a story, too. A tale so replete with wanton weirdness that you can't help but imagining conspiracy theories every where you look. Let's start with the charges, shall we? Nicholas Grech, 37 (AND an Enemalta employee, let's not forget) has admitted to the act of 'hanging' the dead animals… but not to actually killing them. He claims that the animals were already dead at the time, and I suppose this could be taken to mean a number of things: that they were killed by others, or that he collected animal carcasses and (presumably) kept them in a freezer. He could, of course, also be lying. All three scenarios seem equally plausible, at least to me. This creates a small dilemma for the prosecution. As far as I know there is no law specifically against hanging dead animals upside-down in public – if there were, butchers would surely have a thing or two to say about it – and there is clearly no point in citing animal cruelt y laws in this case, as it is not possible to be 'cruel ' to a dead cat (unless the cat belongs to Erwin Schrödinger, in which case it will also be alive). So they either have to prove in court that he did kill those animals, or was somehow complicit in their deaths... or alternatively they can do they usually do in such circumstances, and throw at him whatever other charges they can muster that might actually fit the description. Charges like… erm… what was it now? 'Vilif ying the Catholic religion'. Or was that the 'Cat-lick ' religion? Any way, something as absurd and manifestly misplaced as that. And I suspect it's the latter, as there doesn't seem to be any logical way to 'vilif y' a religion by killing animals – or, still less, dishonouring their remains – which are not considered 'sacred ' or even important by that religion, and which have no ritual or theological significance at all outside the realms of the purely pagan. One could, I suppose, point towards the specific method of 'corpse hanging' preferred in most (but not all) of the Mosta cases. Crucifixion is nowadays universally associated with Christianit y – yes, I know it's terribly unfair on poor Spartacus, but was 2,000 years ago. Get over it – and you can, if you like, infer a cultural/ religious significance to its use in this scenario. But of course it's a purely arbitrary factor. Had we been part of the Aztec Empire, he might have cut out their hearts at the top of a makeshift step pyramid, and devoured them while still beating. Had he been Muslim, he would probably have slit their throats or cut off their heads. But we fall into another, marginally different religious historical tradition; and for this reason alone, this man's antics happened to include a f leeting acknowledgement of this broad cultural realit y. Nonetheless, his actions did offend a great many people in this country; and I imagine most of them would have been (for the same, purely arbitrary reason) Catholic. Again, this points towards a gross f law in the logic behind the charge. If something offends people who are (mostly) Catholic, it is not the religion that has been vilified, but the people. Yet the police take Raphael Vassallo Ghost in the machine Never mind Catholicism, which is a new kid on the block anyway. There are older, darker, more ancestral powers in the universe… and they have very visibly left their paw-prints all over this case YOUR FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY www.maltatoday.com.mt