The Labour Party’s General Conference started to look and feel like one of those old circuses that travel from one village to the next bringing with it some novel amusement to keep the villagers eager for more each time the curtain is lifted and the ringmaster showcases his latest creature or stunt. 

This year the conference was supposed to attract so much attention. A fiscal surplus was advertised in advance and people salivated at the thought that the Prime Minister would unveil the date of the general election.

Instead, the general conference was shrouded in the shadow cast by a magisterial inquiry in which the PL leader and his wife are under investigation over serious allegations made by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

So the conference took on its older format and a jester was rolled out to sweeten the sour taste of the Egrant allegations. TV personality Jean Claude Micallef announced, in full glory, that he shall be returning to his natural home and run with Labour after a stint with the party that was in power for twenty five years. Towards the end, to balance out the adverse effect such opportunists who joined the PL only now bring with them, a some old-Labour  was sprinkled over those present. The ringmaster called on party stalwart Joe Debono Grech and officially appointed him ‘ambassador of the wailing diehards.’

Theatrics aside, the Prime Minister’s speech on Sunday was more thought-through than his cryptic replies during last Friday’s Xarabank. In fact, there was one particular point on which he was definitely spot-on. He told the TV audience, made up of the extended family branded as ‘the movement’ in 2013, that the coalition Simon Busuttil is trying to cook up has no structure or direction. He wasn’t privy of what his counterpart was set to announce later on during the day when Busuttil launched Forza Nazzjonali during the protest against corruption in Valletta, but he was right in saying that the PN/PD coalition lacked the attractiveness his ‘moviment’  had generated back in 2012 when he launched it.

Simon Busuttil and Marlene Farrugia need to do more to convince people that theirs is a solid political force for others to join. The fact that civil society is still reluctant to join protests like that of last Sunday after all that has be unleashed against Muscat must be a sign that the new coalition needs to work harder in the short time that remains between now and the election.

It is very clear that Forza Nazzjonali, (we intend calling it so unless the concept fizzles out), will have one single issue come the election: Panama-Muscat-Corruption. After last weekend’s events, which left everyone none the wiser, people are asking: what’s next?

Joseph Muscat will use the traditional Labour 1 May celebrations to project a show of force, in his regard, not necessarily Labour’s. He is the one who needs to wiggle out of this situation and a show of force will most probably include a timely magisterial verdict on the inquiry before April is over. Time and again, Muscat may prove to be the maverick in sticky situations such as these.