I do not follow Italian football, nor do I follow mixed martial arts, but thanks to the boys at home, I’m always pretty much updated, particularly about Juventus and about that MMA Irish fighter Conor McGregor.
This McGregor can be summed up as a veritable ginger-haired besqa. He has a massive superiority complex and so many chips on his shoulder that it’s a wonder he can punch.
However, he’s got one thing going for him: he’s a showman. In the run-up to every fight he’ll trash talk his opponents and engage in all possible strategies of psychological warfare. He roars, he beats his chest, he struts like he owns the world and thinks that every single human being is a fan of his.
When things go wrong, it’s never his fault; he sulks, he beats people up, then smirks and blames others. His ego is fascinating to watch from afar.
It was not so fascinating, however, watching a similar ego on home turf.
Disgraced former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat last week testified at the inquiry into the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, which is essentially investigating whether the decisions taken by Muscat’s government led to that car bomb explosion three years ago.
Muscat entered the courtroom hall, with a strut not unlike McGregor’s – all that was missing was a cape draped on his shoulders and him lifting his hands and punching the air. His jaws were clenched; dead set to beat the opponent. Only, err, there was no opponent.
Oh, right.
Not a problem at all. He simply morphed into Shakespeare’s Hamlet and gave a half-an-hour soliloquy. “To be or not to be,” Muscat practically read out, bemoaning the pain and unfairness of life, as his hands clutching his script, shook like leaves.
The judges in front of whom he was appearing seemed to be too stunned to stop his little dramatic act and remind him that he was only there to answer questions.
Muscat did not address them; in fact, he looked straight at the audience, which consisted of Daphne’s family, journalists and lawyers. But in his dysmorphic view, Muscat was on sleek stage in front of Castille and the audience was a blinkered one, waving red flags and listening in awe.
All throughout, we could see right through his delusion- Kristina Chetcuti
Obviously, he failed to hear the sound of the collective eyeroll when he said: “people trusted me, and they would again”.
He went on and on and on.
He talked about Napoleon, Roosevelt, Black Friday and the book he has in the pipeline. One moment he was amplifying his regrets, the next he was trying to crack jokes, and the next yet, his eyes appeared to well up.
Were his lawyers holding up cards with instructions? ‘CHUCKLE’, ‘LOOK SORRY’, ‘SOB’, ‘SOB NOW!’ No tears came out, however; he’d used them all up in his Egrant waterworks show a couple of years ago.
The tap has since gone rusty. Perhaps his wife should have packed him some onions instead of oranges for lunch.
No matter. He hid his dry wells by resorting to distraction. He trash talked everyone: the inquiry, at the judges, at the media, at Daphne, at her family, at her lawyers, at the opposition, at the previous administration...
Eventually when, finally, he started answering questions – and out popped that furrowed brow – he profusely contradicted himself.
“I don’t use Facebook,” he said when asked about Castille coordinated online trolls attacking journalists under his watch. Barely had the spit dried on his lips than Muscat’s Facebook page pinged. Throughout the sitting, his very own Facebook was very much live with his own statements.
Then he spoke about his “friendship” with Yorgen Fenech. Although, by the way, they only met him eight times in total in all his life. But it was enough for them to have a prolific WhatsApp chat discussing food, booze and… “No! No women!” he oddly kept stressing.
No one contradicted his contradictions; he rambled on.
When faced by corruption allegations of his chief of staff Keith Schembri and minister Konrad Mizzi, he said he stuck by them because “information trickled in”. When later, information gushed in, he still kept them on, because “they were doers”. But now that everyone has the information at hand, he thinks he might have been “betrayed”. In short, he blamed everyone and anyone, even for his turning a blind eye.
His first thought when he heard that Daphne was the victim of the car bomb: “Ħaqq kif fottewni” (dammit, they screwed me up). They needn’t have killed her, he said, because the election was over and “she had become politically irrelevant”. Daphne’s sister, Corinne noted that Muscat dusted his hands for emphasis. “Whoever committed this crime is stupid!” he said, because (cue: SOB) he ended up being the victim of that bomb – “it ended my political career”. That Daphne died while unearthing the corrupt rot of his right-hand men is by the by.
At the end of the five-hour testimony, he gave another soliloquy – the parting gist of which was that he and his family “are not fleeing to Dubai”. Do we care where he lives? No. What we care is that justice is served, and whoever is/was part of the mafia – including those who turned a blind eye – get what they deserve.
This was a testimony of someone who is trying his best to survive. He may think he pulled it off, that he did a McGregor, but the stark reality is that all throughout, we could see right through his delusion.
In his imaginary fighting ring, he was the emperor with the new clothes. As he was up there jutting his chin out in all seriousness, all we could see was his bare, pink patata wobbling with every spin, and chest beat.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @krischetcuti