A dynasty of PN defectors - Episode Four

"Rachel, Pleeaase interview me"

Shortly before the last general election, Alfred Sant, the PL's leader, addressed his party conference at which I was present. Raising party delegates expectations to fever pitch, he read out a list of 'prominent' Nationalists who he said had switched to Labour. He brought the house down as the delegates rose to their feet chanting 'Viva l-Lejber, hey hey'. A man on Sant's list was a certain Jo Said.

Who is this more recent member of the PN defectors dynasty? Jo Said has, how shall I put it, issues with the real world. For starters, he draws a disability pension on mental health grounds. What's more, no one of any consequence in the PN who I spoke to even knew he was. To turn a Pink Floyd line on its head, there's someone in his head and it is him.

When he burst guns blazing on the scene before the last election this guy used to badger Rachel at every occasion to interview him for Bondiplus. She would politely give him the cold shoulder for the reason mentioned in the previous paragraph. He seems to have a strange thing for female journalists. This PN defector used to also harass Daphne Caruana Galizia on the phone at all hours of the night. Here is what she had to say then: "He was so unbalanced that when, one night at around midnight, I passed the phone to my husband and asked him to please deal with him, Said actually began arguing with him about his ‘right’ to talk to me at midnight, unsolicited and unwanted, and even said that it was none of my husband’s business and would my husband get off the line immediately and pass the phone back to me."

But perhaps he has a Mr Bean-on-funny-pills attitude towards all the media, not just its female members. Here is how the Malta Independent Daily reported one of his so-called press conferences. "TMID asked Mr Said whether he was saying that journalists covered up corruption. 'I was not speaking to you. Do not put words in my mouth. Stop being arrogant. Clown,' was the answer. At this point, TMID refused to take further notice of Mr Said, rather than stoop to his levels of cat-calling. At this point, a journalist from The Times carried on questioning him but eventually walked away too after Mr Said wagged a finger in his face and told him 'not to spin, you are arrogant'. He then proceeded to give a full-length interview to One Television."

Incidentally, Jo Said never calls MaltaToday 'journalists' arrogant, spinners or clowns. Obviously. One of his close friends is Roger Degoirgio, one of the owners of MaltaToday, another skip.

This PN defector never approaches me to interview him. I used to enjoy eyeballing him in public to see how he reacts. But he never made a move. Before the election, when he could no longer contain his fuming frustration for not being on Bondiplus, he rushed off to the Police Commissioner and asked him to investigate me for not interviewing him. Perhaps the Guinness Book of Records should look into this. It might be the first time in history that the police is called on to put a journalist in jail for not conducting an interview. As I said, there's someone in Jo Said's head and it is him.

As things turned out, Commissioner Rizzo did investigate but not quite what Jo Said had in mind. This delusional PN defector was taken to court by the police for blackmailing David Agius, the nationalist MP. He admitted the crime before he was found guilty. Interestingly, he was defended by Manwel Mallia, the new PL prospective candidate. Even more interestingly, Jo Said's list of character witnesses in court included John Dalli, the runner up in the last PN leadership race. What a tangled web we weave.

Jo Said, had also claimed that government asked him to take on the chairmanship of the Malta Tourism Authority. Click: Jo Said and MTA Chairmanship. This claim was not only denied on Bondiplus by four men occupying the highest government posts, from the prime minister's right hand man down, but they said that it was Jo Said himself who had been pestering them.

Inhabiting a particularly dark corner in Joe Said's head is the idea that he is such a dangerous political threat to the Nationalist government that it has to resort to setting the police on him. One time he claimed that two unidentified plain-clothes police officers stopped him outside his house in Mellieha. "The two males branded their police badges and threatened me with the words ‘Ghalaq halqek, tghid xejn ghax ghajnejna fuqek ...’ after blocking my driving path with their white car, which was made to side-stop in my way." Jo Said sounds like a character stepping out of a dark forest in one of Alfred Sant's cloak and dagger detective stories. Quite appropriate, really.

The story of the PN defectors dynasty continues ...