After Simon Busuttil’s election to the Nationalist Party’s deputy leadership, it was inevitable that the Joseph Muscat/Jason Micallef cabal would find the first tenuous excuse to remove Anglu Farrugia from the equivalent position in the Labour Party. The comparisons being made were far too odious – or rather, the comparisons were legitimate, but it was Farrugia who looked even more odious than he did previously.
Odiousness aside, it was his bumbling incompetence and his crass stupidity – yes, he really is not the brightest glass in the (shadow) cabinet – that brought matters to an absolute head. His performance on Xarabank, in that face-off with Busuttil, was so disastrous that even the most obsessed die-hard saw that Labour couldn’t trundle into this general election heaving that particular albatross. Labour couldn’t field him and Labour couldn’t hide him (though it tried that, famously).
So what to do? Remove him. Of course, you can’t simply remove a party official from a position to which he was elected by hundreds of party delegates, and whose preferred choice Farrugia was. So the cabal got together, found an excuse, and asked for his resignation. The excuse was that he had accused a magistrate of political bias. I laughed when I heard that. Oh, really? Political bias, eh? A magistrate? Amazing to see Joseph Muscat so very scandalised about accusations against the judiciary when he thinks nothing of keeping the company of certain magistrates like Consuelo Herrera.
Anglu Farrugia’s behaviour has been appalling from day one. There have been reasons for his leader to demand his resignation long before now, but his removal and replacement with somebody more appealing to the middle ground was not considered important then. It’s strange that Muscat thinks he should remove him for saying that a magistrate is biased, when Farrugia’s performance before the case began, when he posed for the media outside the Police Commissioner’s office, saying that he had asked him to investigate private citizens for vote-buying, and waving about a file purporting to contain hundreds of names, was far more shocking.
I remember thinking at the time how dreadful and unacceptable that was: the shadow justice minister placing such great public pressure on the Police Commissioner, with a carnival of a case and ridiculous accusations, how very awful and thick and stupid Farrugia still was after all these years. Why wasn’t he made to go then? He wasn’t made to go because it wasn’t convenient.
Muscat, who courted Yana Mintoff and the Mintoffjani, who has asked Mintoffian fossil Karmenu ‘Il-Guy’ Vella to write his electoral programme, the programme by which Malta will be governed for five years, suddenly woke up one day last week and thought, “Oh, I must get rid of Anglu Farrugia. If the enemy has Simon, then I must have Louis.”
But how to get rid of him? “Hmmm, didn’t he say a couple of days ago that magistrate X was politically biased in her judgement on the vote-buying case? We’ll get rid of him for saying that.” Somebody points out that Muscat himself was present for that speech which Farrugia gave, and that he applauded him and did not react until there was negative coverage in the newspapers. But footage of Muscat applauding that bit conveniently does not exist, so that’s all right then and we can plough on.
Anglu Farrugia has been the subject of negative media coverage for years now, somebody else points out, trying to play the devil’s advocate. So what’s so special about this negative media coverage? Suppose somebody asks? “Oh, we’ll deal with that later. Who cares? By this time next month, people will have forgotten who Anglu Farrugia was.”
Except that Farrugia isn’t going away, and that it is dangerous to underestimate the damage that a stupid, angry person can do. It can at times be far greater than the damage done by an intelligent angry person. Farrugia will be aware that his rivals on the Mosta constituency, most notably Jason Micallef, will be delighted at his summary removal and his reaction in refusing to stand on the Labour ticket. Now his considerable elector-support is up for grabs and they’re going to be grabbing it – and quite frankly, anybody who was happy to vote for Farrugia is going to be more than happy to vote for Jason.
It didn’t look at all good, either, that contenders to replace Anglu Farrugia as deputy leader were given just 24 hours to submit their names. So in 24 hours, potential candidates are expected to go from digesting the news of Farrugia’s sudden removal – which they were not expecting at all – to thinking that they might quite like to replace him, to discussing it with family and confidantes, to adjusting mentally, to submitting their names. That’s so ridiculous that it can point to one thing only: that Louis Grech – the only person to throw his hat into the deserted ring – must have been identified ahead of the demand for Farrugia’s resignation, and his consent obtained.
It is an ugly plot, and bears no comparison at all to the rigorously transparent fashion in which the Nationalist Party changed its deputy leader after the deus ex machina of John Dalli’s forced resignation as EU Commissioner. There was no plot there – just the tragi-comic irony that it was Dalli, who has dedicated the last eight years to causing the Nationalist Party as much damage as possible, who was the unwitting and unwilling agent of a significant change that improves its chances at the polls.
As for Muscat, his modus operandi is ghastly. I really don’t know how anybody can possibly feel safe and secure working around somebody like that, who poses as decent and honourable and is anything but. To have respect for a backstabber, you must be something of a backstabber yourself. To round on one of your own is an ugly thing indeed. It means that you think nothing of betraying people, that you are untrustworthy, and this regardless of how detestable the victim is.
When I watched part of the Super One fund-raising telethon last week, what struck me most was one scene in which Muscat embraced Farrugia and congratulated him, with a smile like that worn by the hissing snake Kaa in The Jungle Book, on his performance in a debate on RTK. It was a double-edged compliment – he said he had been told how well Farrugia did. In other words, he didn’t bother listening to him himself. I wondered then what he was up to, the body language was so sneaky. It wasn’t long before we found out. There will be those who admire Muscat’s underhanded behaviour and see it as smart. I think it is absolutely dreadful: Goodfellas without the blood or crime.
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