When Franco Debono brushed off his interest in the financial health of the country with the cavalier words that the economy is important but his list of complaints about cassette tapes in court and television in parliament more so, he wasn’t joking

The man who has single-handedly brought business grinding to a near halt over the last few weeks, with no sign of respite for now, must be among Malta’s most despised. That poor soul Robert Musumeci was on Super One the other night, arguing against harsh criticism of Debono in the press (and the inevitable blogs) on the grounds that it isn’t helping. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? What isn’t it helping, Robert? People who write for the internet and for newspapers are not responsible for the psychological equilibrium of politicians. It is not their job to keep them calm so that they don’t go off and do something bloody-minded. If Debono and others are the sort of politicians who can’t respect one of the most basic freedoms they bang on about – the freedom of expression – then the sooner they toddle off, the better for the rest of us. ‘Don’t write about me or I’ll lie down and scream and then you’ll see.’ How wonderful to know that some of our politicians are made of such stern stuff.

We’ve lost sight of the fact that the country is in this situation because of the selfish pique of just one man. Incredible, isn’t it, how one man can cause so much trouble for so many. And here I am not talking about the trouble he has created for his political bosses and colleagues, but about the trouble he has created for Malta. Nobody needed this – not even the Labour Party, despite its protestations to the contrary. The scheduled general election was just a year away and so kicking up this ruckus made no sense at all. Debono should have let it ride for another 12 months then let the electorate deal with whatever the electorate thought needed to be dealt with. That’s democracy, Franco. What you are doing now is the antithesis of it: one man deciding for everyone else, like a dictator but with negative power, the power of obstructing and of bringing things to a halt rather than the power of doing.

Joseph Muscat is another one with a poor sense of judgement. He could have emerged from all this as the better man, the bigger guy, the statesmanlike politician. “Malta doesn’t need these problems at this juncture,” he could have said. “We’ll go to the people at the appointed hour and not before time. Until then, we’re pulling the same rope.” By doing that, he’d have emerged the winner, and almost certainly been the winner eventually at the polls. But his chosen course of action has had the opposite effect. It has made him look foolish and desperate. It has brought him out as having poor strategic skills. It was bad enough that he failed to read the signs that Franco Debono had no intention of voting in favour of Anġlu Farrugia’s motion. But then did he have to emerge from parliament wearing such an angry and sour expression?

Worse still has been the way he has stuck to plan A and continued to up the pressure for a general election. The backdrops saying ‘Stabilita’ had been printed already, the suits and ties had been chosen, the speeches written and rehearsed, so he just rode with it as though the government had lost the confidence vote. With the vote lost, that would have been the obvious thing to do, but in the circumstances, it is not. The campaign on which he has embarked is not sustainable. He can’t keep up this momentum until an election is called, even if that election is imminent, and there are no signs that it is. He has peaked already and without an electoral programme. He is about to plateau and the signs are there in that the sight and sound of him is increasingly irritating rather than inspirational.

The thing that works most against Joseph Muscat, though, is nothing external. It comes from within and it is called self-love. He cannot conceal his delight in his own nearness to the premiership, his childish pleasure in being brought a year closer to his goal by this unexpected turn of events. He is no longer able to conceal that growing self-satisfaction. There are times, such as when he spoke at the party’s general conference, that this ‘I made it’ smirking glow takes over his face. A few days ago, a television camera caught him in close-up when speaking at some event. It caught the fleeting but so obvious expression of enjoyment that passed over his eyes and mouth as the crowd clapped at his ‘rousing’ words. I found the sight of that almost as disturbing as anything his former classmate has done so far.