It is a fact that in the conduct of politics, both internal to a country or externally, lies are used as a tool to secure tactical, and sometimes strategic, gains. They are deployed both by the top echelons of a political organization, as well as by its “middle” strata which are tasked to mountattack activities against adversaries.

To date here in Malta, the PN has been robust in this aspect of political operations, with the blessing of those at the top, when indeed they did not actually trigger the initial impetus. In their wake, a network of privileged contacts among professors and prelates, lawyers and persons involved in the courts, business and the civil service, would take action to create camouflage for what was going on and to legitimise. Perhaps one of the biggest achievements of the present Labour administration has been to fracture this solidarity.

For instance, no critical voice was ever raised outside the Labour camp when Eddie Fenech Adami claimed that I had prevented his son from entering University, and this at the end of a televised debate on the eve of the referendum on Malta’s entry into the EU. He did it just when it was practically impossible to communicate a denial to the people at large. And it was an outright lie.

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Dates

If the last election had been held when it should have been, the report of the magisterial enquiry on the Egrant case would still have then been pending. Meanwhile, the PN’s propaganda machine would have continued to fire accusations and to mobilise anti-government allegations from abroad, all this right through an extended electoral campaign.

This is how the PN proceeded since, after having lost an election with a record margin. Just imagine how it would have acted while awaiting an election. Every allegation would have been given right of way, every statement would have become the certified truth and whoever made the most outrageous claims, would have been considered holier than the holiest... even as the judicial investigation developed in camera.

Prime Minister Muscat made a very wise decision when he called for an early election, even if this meant he would be sacrificing a year of the governing mandate he had already won. In this way, he blocked any opportunity for the Opposition to confuse people, which it would have certainly exploited to the full, with no scruples at all.

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Dumas & Holmes

I got to know about Jean d’Aillon when I discovered in a shop one of his historical-cum-police novels “The Fermat hypothesis”, set in early seventeenth century France. The protagonist is Louis Fronsac, a detective about whom d’Aillon has written a series of novels in which historical intrigues mesh with a mystery that needs to be solved as soon as possible.

In Europe quite a number of novels in the Fronsac mode have been published, in line with a fashion that has for some time beenspreading from Scandinavia to Greece and beyond, one that highlights police thrillers and modern detective stories, some with a “historical” background.

In “Fermat”, d’Aillon introduces us to the intrigues within the French royal establishment, dominated by the kingdom’s Prime Minister Cardinal Mazarin. The codes being used to transmit messages to the King’s negotiators have been penetrated by the enemy. Fronsac visits the renowned mathematician Fermat to ask for his help in countering this problem. The plot feels like a mix of Alexandre Dumas and Sherlock Holmes. It is not tops but the description of details in the everyday life of Paris four hundred years ago is excellent.