Norman Vella, whose magazine-format show TVHemm made for generally interesting viewing every Monday to Friday, has been summarily fired without warning from his show at the state broadcaster and ordered not to report for work as from Monday.
Vella’s show is extremely popular: it gets the third highest audience figures of anything on TVM.
He is not employed directly with the state broadcaster, but is a civil servant who was redeployed there, as clearly his particular gifts are in that field and not in pushing papers at some desk. He is also the creator of the TVM biography show ‘Bijografiji’, which was widely viewed and recently won an award.
In other words, what this boils down to is yet another vindictive transfer, but one with significance for Norman Vella’s large audience and the station he worked for, and not only for him.
Vella told The Malta Independent that the order came directly from the Office of the Prime Minister, and not in a letter but in an email which told him to return to his original government department “on grounds of public policy”. He described the decision as “political”.
You see, this is one other reason I believe Lou Bondi should not have accepted that appointment on the National Festivities Commission: those who sup with the devil need a very long spoon.
A couple of weeks after announcing Lou’s appointment, they stab his long-standing colleague Norman in the back and throat, and in the worst way possible – an email without warning, saying ‘don’t report for work at the station from Monday’.
Put simply, you cannot trust the indecent to be decent. Decency and indecency are neither episodic nor person-and-situation-relevant. They are states of fact. I am not here to give lessons in human nature and psychology, but basically, the beyond-indecent behaviour of Joseph Muscat and those around him, pre and post election, tells us that they are beyond-indecent people.
This means they will behave really badly towards anyone who has to be dispensed with or who gets in their way, with neither scruples nor conscience.
Politics aside, the main reason why it is a very bad idea to work for those who manifest vicious spite and vindictiveness towards those who get in their way is the certain knowledge that when you get in their way it will happen to you too.
People in Lou Bondi’s position (and mine, I suppose) are faced with just three choices: to cooperate with them, remain mistrusted, but take great care to keep them happy; to bow out of the scene and avoid any involvement whatsoever; or, to fight back while saying ‘bring it on and do your worst’.
The Prime Minister personally put Lou on that commission. Now the Prime Minister personally has fired Lou’s friend and colleague, in a reprehensible manner, purely out of political spite because there is no way anyone can suggest that Norman Vella’s skills and talents are best used at a desk in a government department while being lost to television.
I think Lou Bondi only has one course of action before him, really, and he should take it. I know I would. I would rather starve in a gutter than have anything to do with such awful people.
What they’ve just done to Norman they will do to Lou as and when they see fit. I wouldn’t wait around for it to happen. And I certainly wouldn’t be having a smile and a friendly chat with somebody who did that to a friend and close colleague, or taking his calls – yes, even if he is the prime minister.
