Our very own tin-pot Napoleon in an ill-fitting suit took his well-travelled podium to Hal Lija yesterday and set it up beneath what was once a garden folly. There he told us that he wishes to build the Second Republic.

You can see the thinking here. Borg Olivier’s name is linked to Independence from Britain, Mintoff’s to Malta becoming a republic, Fenech Adami’s to Malta joining the European Union. Muscat wants to be the fourth name on the Big List, conveniently overlooking the embarrassment of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici and the mentor he now pretends doesn’t exist, Alfred Sant. But what big status issues are there left? There are none.

So he sat down with his klikka and came up with something.  “Weimar Republic...no...Third Reich...no, better not...Second Republic! That’s it. We’ll have a Second Republic and in the history books it will go down under my name: the Muscat Republic.”

So how does he plan on creating this Second Republic? It turns out that what he means is changing bits of the Constitution, some of which are up for review anyway, like the neutrality clause. How, exactly, does this constitute a Second Republic? It doesn’t, but he loves the grandeur of it and thinks it will play well with his sect-members, who sound increasingly like Moonies if only they but knew it.

It’s interesting to see how Muscat segues from kissing Mintoff’s coffin to kicking Mintoff’s chief obsession down the hill - but needs must when the electoral devil drives.

The rest of his promised fiddling about with the Constitution is considerably less attractive. It involves members of the public putting in their two cents worth on drafting – because, you know, we’re all experts in Constitutional law nowadays, and the expression ‘everyone is entitled to his opinion’ is taken to mean ‘everyone’s opinion is valid and expert’. That bit is pretty scary.

Then there was something about the Broadcasting Authority, which is actually set up in terms of the Constitution though not many people know it. Under the Labour government of the Golden Years, it was dissolved and not set up for a long time, in blatant defiance of the Constitution, because Muscat’s heroes decided we didn’t need any such fussy rubbish when Xandir Malta was doing such an excellent job.

Muscat actually said at his podium appearance in Lija this morning that perhaps the Broadcasting Authority’s powers of control should be extended to cover the press. I hope at least one reporter got him on this one, but going by the reports I’ve read so far, they didn’t bother. How can the Broadcasting Authority cover the press? Broadcasting, as its name implies, means the broadcast media (radio and television). The press is the print media, more properly newspapers, and has nothing to do with broadcasting at all. It is an entirely different animal, works differently, has significantly different impact and the two are kept separate for this reason.

The Broadcasting Authority in Malta has a political balance function only because of our particular political situation. Ordinarily, it would not have this function. It would deal merely with standards of another kind, and collate viewer complaints about racist portrayals, sexism, porn, that kind of thing.

Muscat is absurd, undemocratic and dangerous if he is suggesting here that the Broadcasting Authority’s political balance function should be extended to newspapers. Newspapers have always been free to publish what they please, how they please, constrained only by the Press Act which deals with libel and the right to reply. That is one British (later European) tradition to which we would like to adhere, however much some might find it upsetting and incomprehensible that there is no ‘control’.

So mystified were the supporters of Muscat’s hero Mintoff at the inability of the state to tell newspapers what to do that they once took matters into their own hands and burned down the premises and printing press of the newspaper they hated most. Yet that same newspaper hasn’t even reacted (at the time I am writing this) to Muscat’s kite-flying that the Broadcasting Authority should also control our newspapers.

Let him try that, and he’ll have a war on his hands.

But what got me most was the way he keeps going back repeatedly to the populist talk – disguised disingenuously as ‘progressiveness’ – of the Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici era. That prime minister told a London broadsheet that Malta doesn’t need courts of law because it will have ‘the people’s courts’. Muscat is going down that road except that we fail to notice because he is not so obvious and also because we think that unlike KMB he is a normal person.

“The Constitution has always been amended by politicians. We want other ideas to be discussed too,” he said yesterday, talking about how a people’s convention will be brought together to discuss and consider Constitutional amendments. What on earth is he on about? The Constitution can only be amended by parliament, not even by the government because a two-thirds vote is required. They are politicians, yes, but they are not just any politicians – they are the representatives of the people, with a seat in the House. They are delegated by the people, in a general election, to take decisions on their behalf, including amending the Constitution as and when required.

What I see here is a creeping attitude towards the dissolution or weakening of the institutions which are designed to counterbalance the power of the state versus the individual, disguised as the very opposite: the empowerment of the individual versus the state. You will notice that there is never anything about the reduction of what will be Muscat’s own power as prime minister. While all around him is weakened under the pretence of strengthening it, he gets stronger by having more influence over severely weakened institutions and systems. We shouldn’t like it one bit.