Should the Chairman of the Housing Authority who serves people mainly from the lower echelons of society be allowed to write with such bias in newspapers? She seems to be simulteanously running a campaign for the Nationalists, Labour and now Alternattiva all at the same time.

One didn’t care so much when it wasn’t happening in our newspaper. A glimpe of her omnipresent cascading hair and head tilted on one side, as in holy pictures of old, I usually give her a miss. She is so predictable. But lately I am obliged to meet her every Monday, eyeball to eyeball and I can barely make my escape. If we do not stamp our feet and sulk she may well pull her political ropes (forget about mere strings) and we’ll have to stomach her for breakfast on Sundays as well.

In her last two columns the rather colourless and anaemic-looking Marisa (she needs some of my Radiance pills), found her dispensing stern judgement on those who were thinking of giving a vote to Arnold Cassola. Her advice was stoutly ignored. The results of the MEP election bear witness to this. Her writing did nothing to change the growing public distaste or the boredom and disillusionment of a good slice of voters. The Nationalist campaign was shrill and unsubstantial with columnists like Marisa shrillest of all. So Nationalist voters repudiated their allegiance and voted for Cassola.

To Marisa the Nationalists are a moral crusade. She sees them as the self-proclaimed party of the nation and no one should ever take their place. And who can blame her? What would she do with herself if Alfred Sant came into power? No wonder she is ready to emerge at every election and referendum and almost every column in between with her sulphurous class prejudices, anti-Labour spiel and now anti-Alternattiva vindictive. She would like the Nats to have perpetual, untrammelled power. It was the Nats who put her there after all. But she is paid and chauffeured around by your taxes and mine and those of the ‘uneducated’ who vote Labour and whom she so despises. There she goes, the unspeakable in pursuit of the unable to speak although I trust she exchanges the occasional word in Maltese with them and listens to their housing problems.

She writes things which are embarrassing, mostly to the Nats. Her columns both in our paper and the other one, given her position, are a complete abuse of patronage and indeed of the Fourth Estate, the press.

Her obsession is the destruction of the Leader of the Opposition. The leitmotiv of her mindset is Alfred Sant. I can just see her stabbing her salad with her fork and repeating that tired phrase: “What this country really needs is a decent electable Opposition, not a third party that will give power to Alfred Sant.” She then writes these inspiring words in her column on a Monday. (I hope we are not paying her for it but that she is paying us.) But which Nat columnist and spin doctor has not been stating that, time and time again? They think these repetitive assertions will bring Sant down. But do Laburisti take the slightest bit of notice? On the contrary we are determined to keep him there.

Here’s a woman who starts her day on hot water with more than a dash of lemon. Her columns are tinged with the bitterness of the passed-over. For you may recall that Ms Micallef L contested the 1998 election on the 9th District – Ta’Xbiex, Gzira and so on – but on the third count had gleaned a mere 115 votes. Gzira? There must have been good reason for not contesting in Sliema. Too many electable candidates there. But wasn’t the vulgar oxygen of Gzira too much for her rarefied lungs? But ambition is ambition.

Votes are votes. What Marisa really wants is not to be Chairman of the Housing Authority having to deal with the hoi polloi but to be Minister swanning around in a chauffeured car with frequent freebies abroad.

She has no pedigree when it comes to the Nats. She can’t claim, like one other columnist, time and time again ad nauseum, how she was beaten up by Old Labour (now very much a declining force) and even spent one night locked up in a police station. She may have voted Labour in her years in Brixton but that does not give her the much needed common touch in politics.

I also notice that she is no longer protecting her old power base Dr Gonzi on whom she had previously showered enough glowing adjectives to barely fit intoWar and Peace. I see that in her last column (I made myself read it as I was sipping a glass of chilled sparkling wine to celebrate our three MEPs) she continues to give us more cliffhangers and to pontificate, with what justification I do not know: “Making him PM a few months before an important election so Eddie could be President was unwise.” The Oracle speaketh. The Nats should appoint her a campaign leader next time round.

Can’t you see her sipping her Chardonnay and bleating: “If the MLP do well this time, we’re stuck with Alfred Sant until the next election. Now that’s a scary thought...” And then she puts it into her Monday column. Scary for whom, may I humbly ask? But then, no one takes the slightest bit of notice of what she says anyway.

She was panicking in that column before the MEP election. She needs to be instructed in the art of not panicking when bad news makes those who panic seem like losers. Anyway, it is dull repetition which another columnist does so much better and with infinitely more fire in her belly.

Here’s another pearl of Marisa wisdom: “It will be a loss to this country if three excellent Nationalist reps don’t make it and we have three negative Labour reps instead.” Your loss is our gain dear. I am delighted with Joseph Muscat, Louis Grech and John Attard Montalto, all three worthy representatives in Brussels. All three with excellent backgrounds. It is these candidates who are going to stand up strongly for our interests but especially the interests not of the elite but of the man in the street. So go on bleating into your Chardonnay Marisa.

The spontaneous combustion of the last few days is heartwarming proof that spin doctors cannot operate on an electorate at will.

It is understandable that Marisa’s sense of security is slightly ruffled. The result of the recent election for Europe has pulled certainty from under her feet.

For the sake of the Nats, for the sake of our readers for my sake I hope her column on Mondays is but an Indian summer. There are enough columnists in English-language journalism who stoop to personal abuse that is ignorant, nasty, stomach-turning and brutal.

I say give her, this woman with a mixture of obsessions, a desk at party headquarters and get her to address envelopes in the Nationalist cause.

But perhaps Marisa has as yet to understand that ultimately what matters about human beings is not their politics but their goodness.