Joseph Muscat just cannot help it.

His narcissism and thirst for the spotlight has once again pushed him to the forefront of public life as he keeps his supporters guessing on whether he will contest the coming MEP election.

Yesterday week, he took to the podium to address an enthusiastic crowd to tell them that he is being unfairly targeted as being corrupt, saying that he is not afraid of going to prison.

But what emerged clearly before, during and after the event is that Muscat still holds the Labour Party in his grip. And this is where the problems start.

Since his disgraced exit from Castille in 2020, Muscat has never strayed away from the public eye. He maintained a regular presence in the news, both of his own doing, and also as his political past slowly catches up with him.

His more recent foray however was much more than a public appearance. The underlying message Muscat wanted to pass was that he is still in control. His attention-seeking could spell trouble for Labour, and even ardent supporters are worried that history could repeat itself.

He is to Robert Abela what Dom Mintoff was to Alfred Sant in the late 1990s. When leaders who amassed so much popularity as Mintoff and Muscat did at the height of their political career do not move aside once they give up the reins of the party, the shadow they cast on their successor runs the risk of causing trouble.

It happened to Alfred Sant in 1998, when he was forced to call an early election because of how Mintoff was behaving. Robert Abela has a much steadier advantage in Parliament compared to Sant, and there is no danger to his government. But Muscat’s presence does haunt him.

There is one not insignificant difference between the Mintoff-Sant clash and the one between Muscat-Abela. Aged 84 at the time, Mintoff was at the end of his political career in 1998. Muscat, having just turned 50, is still in his prime.

One could argue that even Sant himself stayed on in politics after he left the PL leadership in 2008, going on to earn a seat at the European Parliament for 10 years. But Sant always knew his place, and to his credit he never tried to upstage Muscat and Abela, as Muscat is doing with Abela.

In public, Abela knows that he cannot go against Muscat. Abela knows that he does not charm Labour supporters as much as Muscat did and still does. Abela also knows that, if Muscat were to one day wake up and decide to run for the PL leadership again, there will be no contest. Labour supporters still adore and idolise Muscat and, to them, he can do no wrong.

So Abela has to keep up a brave face when he is asked about the possibility of a Muscat return to politics, saying that he could never close the door to the former leader when, deep down, he (Abela) would like him (Muscat) to stay out of it. No leader likes to be overshadowed, much less by his predecessor.

Abela has tried his best to keep Muscat away, even accepting to give Muscat an unprecedented and “excessively generous” severance package which contained elements that previous Prime Ministers had not benefited from. A second car and an office at Sa Maison were among the “extras” that Muscat was afforded when he quit in 2020. And we’re all paying for it.

Abela will never admit it, but he understands that Muscat comes with a baggage. In his six years as PM, Muscat was lucky enough not to have had to face the crisis brought about by a global financial crisis, a pandemic and wars in Europe and the Middle East, and this enabled him to lift Malta’s economy while introducing popular civil reforms that earned him the support of the minorities.

But he will, of course, also be remembered for his deficiencies when it comes to the rule of law, and for having fuelled a culture of impunity that, unfortunately, has become ingrained in our society from the top to the lowest levels. He will also be remembered for the title he earned in 2019 from the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, for having defended his close allies Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri following the revelations in the Panama Papers, and for the State’s failures as determined in a public inquiry into the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The one year of Malta’s greylisting by the Financial Action Task Force, a money laundering watchdog, was by and large as a result of the shortcomings in the Muscat administration, although this “sentence” was ironically served with Abela as PM.

One must also keep in mind whether the European socialists want someone like Muscat as part of their team.

Muscat’s presence on the ballot sheet will give Labour a bigger victory at the EP election – that is the kind of country we live in. But whether Muscat will be an asset or a liability is what will be determined by time.