Who cast the First Stone?

Today, Saviour Balzan wrote an article, wherein he states that Mario de Marco should resign from the Strickland Foundation and the Nationalist Party. This request was made because of yesterday’s events in court. His request is linked to the relationship between Mario de Marco and Adrian Hillman in the past. I am told that de Marco meanwhile has severed all ties with Adrian Hillman. As a historian, I must state facts as they are. In brief, if Saviour Balzan and his media want credibility,  they should have asked for Mario de Marco’s resignation when the friendship and political intrigue broke out many years ago and not today.

It is appropriate here to remind Saviour Balzan that way back, I had written about the friendship between Mario de Marco and Adrian Hillman in the blog that I had in the Malta Independent. This was in 2016. I wrote this article after the Labour media started revealing certain aspects regarding this friendship and political corruption. I remember an article about de Marco and Hillman, which appeared in KullĦadd, was not uploaded on the Labour Party digital portal. I realized then that there was something that was not tallying in this scoop.

Indeed, I had asked the then PN leader, Simon Busuttil, to kick de Marco out of the party if he wanted to gain political kudos though, by doing so,  I could envisage what would happen next. The immediate reaction was for  the PN to ostracize me.  

Today, the Nationalist Party and Simon Busuttil claim credit for what happened yesterday in court. The truth is that when this whole story broke out, Simon Busuttil was not alone in defending Mario de Marco, the Times and attacking me. There were others who attacked me politically in the PN for speaking my mind. These same individuals are today being given credits for these arraignments. This is political hypocrisy. If Balzan wants to be credible, he should have spoken about Mario de Marco and Hillman when these stories were taking place and not now that de Marco broke off his friendship with Hillman. This does not mean that Mario de Marco should not carry political responsibility but all the facts should be stated. But this has now become history.

Balzan should be reminded also that because I wrote an article and demanded the PN to become politically responsible, a whole campaign was set in motion. Eventually, I was stopped from carrying out the news analysis on Campus FM; the TOM slowly mounted a personal attack against me; The Malta Independent made it clear that I was no longer welcome and censored an article where I made reference to Adrian Hillman. Eventually, Malta Today joined the fray. Today, even the TOM appears to be intensifying its campaign to discredit me  by attacking my academic credentials. All this cowardly concerted attack simply originated from my demand for righteousness in local politics!   

History, however, is proving me right.