You just have to wonder at the government's sense of priorities. To announce two cents off the price of petrol and a cent off the price of gas in months when nobody is using it for heating, they stage a high impact press conference of the sort generally used for a declaration of war or an announcement that the entire cabinet of government has resigned en masse: all rows of flags, heightened anticipation, sombre pomp and the Prime Minister on stage accompanied by the Minister for Gas.
But with the entire country - or at least, the sentient 30% who can see beyond the acquisition of the latest killer-car, boat, five-inch hooker heels or lap dancer -wondering what has happened to the non-existent new power station that is supposed to be fully commissioned in five months' time, the Prime Minister keeps totally mum and the Minister for Gas turns himself into the Invisible Man.
When the Prime Minister was at long last confronted by a journalist from The Malta Independent, in public and while a camera filmed him and he couldn't back off, he was forced to respond, though his reply was preceded by the quizzical expression and tell-tale furrow between the brows that warns onlookers this is not something about which he wishes to be entirely honest. He more or less owned up to the fact that the power station is not going to be ready by March - well, you don't need to be some kind of seer to work that one out - but he weaselled his way out of his commitment to resign by saying that tariffs will be cut anyway, power station or not, and that the government's tariff plan is not dependent on the new power station.
His promise to resign, apparently, was tied to not having his government's tariff plan functional by March, and not to the power station. So now, to save his skin, his government's energy plan is suddenly all about tariffs reduced in a sort of vacuum. And this begs the question: if he can reduce tariffs without a new power station, then why should we have one at all? I suppose it's because, while he is perfectly at ease with reneging on his resignation commitment to the electorate, there are problems attached to reneging on any commitment he may have made to the power-station powers, before the general election.
The Minister for Gas, meanwhile, has not been seen in public for months. He has been kept away, or has been keeping himself away, from anything that might include journalists, and he has certainly not called any press conferences or staged any media events himself. People have mentioned that the last time we saw him was when he and the Prime Minister had themselves filmed chucking around buckets of water purporting to be ice. But that was not a public sighting of the sort that counts, because it was filmed by staff and put on YouTube. The newsrooms were not invited round to cover it in case they refused to do what was expected of them and sit and beg, and instead asked awkward questions about inconvenient matters like the power station, as The Malta Independent did when it finally managed to confront the Prime Minister with a microphone.
The wonder, of course, is that journalists wait to be called in to the Gas Minister's presence, instead of lying in wait outside his office or his home armed with recorders and video cameras. He goes in to his office most mornings and leaves it most evenings, and also at several points during the day. At night, he goes home to his flat down at the Sliema Ferries, next to the Nazarene church and all those coffee-shops where large numbers of the population congregate. Even if he ignores any journalists who doorstep him and forces his way past them with his usual laughing brush-off, they should film that and broadcast it because it's newsworthy in itself. The very man who was all over the place before the last general election - you could barely turn on the television without seeing his face - is now uncomfortable facing the very same electors who gave him his chance and put him into power.