Over the past day or so two interviews have been aired on television stations. Dissett saw Simon Busuttil interviewed by Reno Bugeja. And on One Konrad Mizzi was interviewed by Ramona Attard in a bare office.
The Nationalist Party had its take on the Simon Busuttil appearance on Dissett. They coolly put up a video which included all of Dr Busuttil’s replies but none of Mr Bugeja’s interjections so that the latter is only heard in semi-syllables and grumps.
It would seem that Mr Bugeja went out of his way to object to whatever was being said by Dr Busuttil. That does not make him a good interviewer but more like acting on behalf of the governing party.
On the contrary, Dr Busuttil comes through loud and clear. It is amazing how the man has grown in the period he has been PN leader.
Dr Mizzi, on the contrary, was on home ground – he was interviewed by a sympathetic interviewer who gave him enough openings to defend himself.
Even so, however, one cannot mistake a certain sense of unease. Even the questions themselves, although they meant to put the minister in a good light with viewers, could not hide the huge damage the matter has done to the government’s credibility.
This was home ground, remember, but at one point, the minister’s face got very red in a particular moment. In a bare office, with a complaisant interviewer, the minister must have become shy and the only thing he could have got shy because of was the words he was saying.
A whole year after the world got to know Minister Mizzi had an account in Panama, the damage to Labour and to the Labour government shows no sign of abating. On the contrary it keeps growing and growing.
It has left Labour with no narrative, except anger at whoever revealed the matter (Daphne Caruana Galizia) and empty boasts at the good that has been done.
Whereas it has given the Opposition, and its leader, a cause, and enough arguments to last a lifetime. This issue has overtaken all other arguments in the Opposition’s hands. It has landed the government an overall charge of corruption, and complicity at high places. It has tainted the government as one big cabal where everybody defends all the others because everyone has dipped his hand in a sea of corruption.
There does not seem to be an antidote to this; certainly the Ramona Attard did not even begin to counter-attack the onslaught. And the Reno Bugeja interjections were bleatings from an ineffectual secondary figure which did nothing to counter Dr Busuttil’s statements.
Now whether this will be enough to unseat the government come election time, only time will tell. Perhaps the Maltese electorate will prove to be insensitive to Dr Busuttil’s oratory. Or perhaps not.
Certainly, seen from this corner, there was a trenchant intensity in Dr Busuttil’s cogent words which corresponded to the reality one sees around him, as much as there was emptiness and post hoc vacuity in Dr Mizzi’s lame explanations.