The Nationalist Party and its media are accusing the Malta Labour Party, and in particular its leader, of not speaking up about the privatisation of the Malta Shipyards. The PN is accusing Joseph Muscat of sitting on the fence on important issues, preferring to adopt a wait-and-see attitude before making up his mind.
On the other hand, the Malta Labour Party is pointing fingers at the government and the PN for not speaking up about the Mistra scandal that characterised the last days of the election campaign and is still reverberating in the political sphere, three months down the line. MLP exponents are saying that the one-seat majority the PN enjoys in Parliament is stopping Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi from airing his views, as this could lead to serious problems for him and his party.
But then, we are used to it, aren’t we? It is the same situation we had in the previous term and the ones before that too, with the government and the opposition always at loggerheads on almost each and every particular issue.
It must be admitted however that Dr Muscat is showing some signs that he really believes in the new political season that he himself has been advocating since his election on 6 June – and he is doing this by not being afraid to say things as they really are.
He does not shy away from praising what there is to praise, and criticising what there is to criticise. By doing so, he is gaining credibility, and it is a real pity that other party officials, including Labour MPs, have not caught on. It seems that they are still to be persuaded to follow his line of thinking, as most of them are only prepared to talk if there is something negative to say.
By acting like this, Dr Muscat is totally different from his predecessor, Alfred Sant, too. Dr Sant would never have said that he “will continue working for victory not because the country is doing badly, but because (the Labour Party) will be able to lead the country better than the Nationalist government”.
Yet, Dr Muscat did, admitting that the “country is not doing badly”, because it would be wrong to say otherwise.
In the same way last Sunday he called on the Public Transport Federation to call off its strike, planned to start on the following day, because the consumers would have been hit hard, not the government. Other opposition party leaders would have relished a state of confusion that a strike always brings about, especially if it concerns all sectors of public transport, and not try to act as mediators.
Of course, Dr Muscat is not without his faults, and this comes across mostly when he criticises the government of not acting European in its ways. On two separate occasions recently, Dr Muscat first told the government to “live up to European expectations” and then went one further by stating that the government “does not know how to act European”.
Coming from someone who spoke and wrote so much against Malta’s membership in the European Union before the people voted in favour in the referendum held in March 2003, such statements do raise eyebrows, especially among those neutral voters that the Malta Labour Party would like to attract.
True, Dr Muscat then went on to be elected as one of Labour’s representatives in the European Parliament, and did a good job in the first four years too. But one thing he should avoid is speaking about the government’s European credentials, which have been consistently geared towards achieving the best for Malta through its EU membership, something that Dr Muscat cannot boast about.