When the Opposition stood up in parliament to give tribute to the late British Labour MP Jo Cox, who was brutally killed last week, the Prime Minister felt he should reply with an appeal against hate speech.
Barely 24 hours before his parliamentary address against hate speech, Joseph Muscat was attacking me. He said I am "good for Eurovision only."
I do not want to make this about me. I just want to point out the hypocrisy, the malice and the irony.
Hypocrisy, first. An appeal against hate speech is so rich coming from a man who doesn't miss a single chance to attack members of the Opposition.
His media machine is even choosing well-known and not so well-known private citizens, and exposing them to total character assassination, simply because they disapprove of this government’s shady ways and even shadier means.
The Prime Minister gives a hefty salary to a person of his trust, Glenn Bedingfield, to work from Castile while spitting venom on a blog which does nothing but attack people on a personal level.
And when I say personal, I don’t just mean simply attacks on someone’s reputation. I mean the uploading of comments designed to denigrate people’s physical appearance, usually women, with sexual taunting innuendos.
So much for the most feminist government in history.
Next, there is the malice. Why am I such a target of the venom of Muscat and his henchmen? Because I am persistently criticizing the lack of transparency in the infamous multi-million deal to sell out our health system.
Muscat sometimes can’t control his own malice, even against his own people. Muscat said that the government side has the best doctors, and then he mentioned Chris Fearne and Deo Debattista. No mention of Godfrey Farrugia, his first health minister, a very popular but independent-minded doctor. Never think it’s just a coincidence.
Then there is the irony. So much irony it’s difficult to know where to start.
Muscat sneers at my early career in the media when he himself is a former Super One hack?
Muscat rubbishes my analysis of what’s going wrong with health because I’m not a medical doctor? Neither was his previous health minister, Konrad Mizzi, who has no background in any medical field.
My qualifications (obtained from the Universities of Malta and of Bologna) might not be from the medical field but I do have top practitioners, from various areas of medicine, advising me. And, lo and behold, my warnings on the health sector are not that different from the warnings coming from the health professionals’ associations.
Of course, that is exactly why Muscat is attacking me on a personal level. As Margaret Thatcher once remarked: “I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.”
Margaret Thatcher also said that, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples' money.” But of course Muscat is no socialist. He has a new way of doing politics.
That’s what he promised us before the last general election and, for once, he kept his word.
He is a prisoner to secret deals made before the last election. He has no respect for the dignity of institutions. He has appointed people unfit and out of their depth and, when they fall flat on their face or are caught engaging in disgraceful behaviour, he is unable to take the decisions that matter.
Yes, it is a new way of doing politics. Now we are seeing the effect this has on our political system and on our country’s reputation abroad. An immediate and very unpleasant effect indeed.
And, when you or anyone else points it out, Muscat sets the attack dogs on you.