In actual fact we have a government that simply thrives on hot air. With the “safe hands” mantra having long vanished into thin air, the Prime Minister seems to have only two fallback positions in order to try and do the impossible – that of creating a cooked-up ‘feel good factor.’

Almost daily the PM’s spin doctors are inventing visits to an endless number of projects, factories, and institutions and enterprises in order to provide the PM with his daily ‘political fix’ of photo opportunities.

Everything is orchestrated by Castille itself to the extent that sometimes a number of companies ‘welcoming’ the Prime Minister actually comment in social circles that they themselves can hardly figure out why on earth did the PM choose to visit them – particularly if they happened to be projects visited only recently by other Cabinet Ministers.

As I had hinted earlier, later in the year, the PM is expected to have lined up for him a number of events featuring children of all ages to try and help project the image of a youthful and rejuvenated party and government.

Unfortunately what seems to be bothering people most is something that simply cannot be negated by these synthetic and so patently engineered media events.

And this is the government’s near fetish for self-denial as well as the boomerang effect of all the self-praise that it has been showering upon itself.

Some statements are simply ridiculous and worrying at the same time.

In spite of it being common knowledge that we are among the biggest laggards in the entire EU when it comes to alternative energy, In-Nazzjon last week claimed that the government had implemented all its promises in the alternative energy sector.

As this paper’s sister publication The Malta Business Weekly had occasion to comment recently in its editorial ‘Commitments Up In Smoke’, the government must be stretching credibility badly when it claims that the closure of the Marsa Power Station has been delayed due to the Opposition’s objections to the BWSC contract. The editorial actually remarked that such claims can at best be considered as superficial and testament to a lack of foresight.

Everyone knows that in spite of the PL’s harsh criticism of the heavy fuel oil that will be used in the Delimara plant extension, at no stage did the PL hinder in any way the adjudication, the contract signing, as well as the execution of the contract per se.

The same tactic was resorted to by the Prime Minister himself when he admitted that Malta had exceeded limits on the disposal of municipal waste in landfills because of delays in the building of the plant.

PL opposition was not about the plant per se, but about the lack of transparency and total absence of any serious consultation that one could find in the whole process leading up to the Sant’Antnin project.

European Environment Agency reports not only show that we are often late in reaching certain directive targets but also that in a number of cases we simply fail to even submit certain information in time.

Within the span of less than two weeks government evidently saw its plans go haywire in both the energy sector as well as in the landfill sectors, relying on the old prop of blaming the Opposition for it all – in spite of the fact that this administration has been running the country since 1987 with the exception of a short 22-month interlude.

Government apologists right now happen to be working so hard to try and shore up ‘their’ government that we have got to the ridiculous stage, where any criticism levelled at government and government-friendly institutions is not only played down, but even worse, media conferences organised by the PL are ignored in spite of certain newspapers having their reporters present. The said media then carries rebuttals and denials of allegations made without even having had the decency to carry the allegations made by the PL in the first place.

But then this is Malta under a Sicilian-style type of regime – with a number of organisations led by cronies who were enough of an inside PN man or men to learn well enough of the skeletons in the PN cupboard. Knowing certain people quite well – as practically all Malta does by now – I do not put it beyond them that in order to protect themselves they will not think twice in doing so even at the cost or expense of embarrassing their own party.

Meanwhile the PN character assassination modus operandi is expected to intensify in the coming weeks – not only against the most ‘favourite’ of PL targets, but particularly against any Nationalists who might have either jumped ship or else who might be still toying with the idea of doing so.

In spite of all the issues raised, the matter that seems to be concerning people most is the degree and extent of any links that may exist between government, the police, the PN and the state security apparatus.

The odd and questionable behaviour of certain key officials and their erratic double standards tend to imply rightly or wrongly that such links seem to be alive and well… and kicking!

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Leo Brincat is the Shadow Minister for the Environment, Sustainable Development & Climate Change