Many say that the current government gets its way and silences all criticism through the deployment of fear. In a way, but really it's a lot more complicated than that. Fear alone makes people resent the instiller of fear. He or they come to be acknowledged as a real or perceived oppressor, to be ousted with haste at the first opportunity. For a government to rule purely through fear, in a parliamentary democracy, is self-defeating.

So no, this isn’t all about fear of reprisal, though that is an essential element of maintaining control while doing as you please. There is also the element of pleasure, reward and being in on something, included in the special group, even if it’s with another 100,000+ others. Muscat is using Mintoff’s tactics, but they are not immediately recognisable because the huge socio-demographic changes between then and now mean that those tactics are deployed on different groups.

What we are talking about here is the mixture of fear and reward dealt out by parents who really don't know how badly they're messing up their children and denting their potential for level-headed maturity as adults. Because an overwhelming proportion of the Maltese population seems to have been raised that way, they respond positively to this kind of handling. It’s what they know. They don’t think it absurd, dangerous and damaging. They think it’s normal, even in a government. They think it so normal that in situations where it doesn’t exist, as with the previous government, they assume that it does and look for proof. That this ‘proof’ comes in the form of two self-serving members of parliament, who speak of ‘cliques’ which exclude them, does not strike them as ridiculous.

They are comfortable with it and do not think it freaky or unacceptable. That is why you get so many people who say “Why not take it, if it has been offered to me?” (I can think of many reasons why not, but I appear to be in a tiny minority who knows the definitions of prostitution, compromises, strings attached, and free lunches) and others who justify their behaviour with the paltry “L-ohrajn ma tawni xejn” (the others gave me nothing). They are programmed to view as normal and entirely legitimate behaviour the trade-off between prizes/gifts/rewards and their own personal compliance. There was no word for integrity in Maltese; we had to borrow one. And even now, most people would be hard-pressed to define it.

Mintoff and Muscat simply took the simple tactics used by bad parents on their children and used/use them on the electorate. This is the fear of savage punishment and family exclusion (cold-shouldered in your own home, cupboard under the stairs, etc) with the concomitant prospect of reward for obedience and compliance (you will get this toy if you don't answer back or upset me, and if you sit quietly). What Muscat's party has been doing - starting from the outset, in Opposition - is the version for grown-ups. But we had seen it already for years with Mintoff.

If you belonged to the group, if you complied, you got even what was not yours by right. But the price for that was compliance in the trampling of common decency, correct practice and ultimately, the basic rights and freedoms of the population as a whole. And if you did not belong to the group, if you refused to comply with what you saw was wrong, if you refused to persuade yourself that wrong was right, that ‘everybody’s doing it’ somehow made bad things good, and that ‘needs must when the devil drives’, ‘all is fair in love and war’ and so on, then you were denied even what was yours by right.

Fear alone breeds hatred of those who are feared. But the doling out of rewards and sweets makes the concomitant fear palatable to the point where we don’t notice it. It is for others, those who don’t obey or comply, to feel the fear of reprisal, a fear that has taken the place of the fear of violence and human rights abuses. The good boys and girls, the obedient ones, the ones who say they love Joseph and don’t answer back, who sit quietly while he does what he likes, get their sweets and toys and play happily like children who don’t really understand what they have given up in return for a tube of Smarties.